Company
by madamefaust
Summary: Modern Retelling for theatre geeks. At a liberal arts college in Rhode Island, the lives of Erik, Christine, Raoul, the Persian, the corps de ballet and others cross to make for one seriously crazy freshman year. Rated for language and mild drug use.
1. Climbing Uphill

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantome of the Opera_ belong to me. Any musicals, plays or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

_No, not at my shoes, don't look at my shoes, I hate these fucking shoes! _

_Why'd I pick theses shoes, why'd I pick this song, why'd I pick this career, why - _

_Does this pianist hate me?_

-The Last Five Years

If she thought that listening to people who were in more dire audition straits than her would be remotely helpful in relaxing her nerves Christine was wrong. Dead wrong. Hella wrong. So wrong she was fairly positive that she would never be right ever, ever again. So Christine shut off her iPod and lifted her eyes from her own shoes (shoes that she actually really liked) for the first time to look up at some aspect of the campus that wasn't a beautifully manicured lawn.

The building itself was beautiful. That was really all Christine could think of as she approached the grand edifice (she wasn't so much given to flowery language, but 'grand edifice' seemed to be the way to go when describing this structure). It was known as the Fine Arts Center, but that really didn't do the place justice. It looked more like...a church than a theatre. Or maybe a temple. With its big Greek columns and domed roof, it was kind of like the Parthanon, but stuck in the middle of a college campus in southern New England. The juxtaposition of wandering college students, great shady trees lining the road and the big old temple-thing made for a strange, surreal sort of environment. Christine wasn't sure whether or not she really liked the odd prettiness of the building. For someone who pretty much lived in and out of concert halls her entire life, one would think that being faced with yet another ornate, overdone auditorium turned art monument would be routine at this point. No such luck.

If it had been some square building with too many windows, then that might have been okay, some modern monstrosity that was all gleaming and sleek and 21st century, yeah, she could deal with that. This place just made her feel inadequate. In her flats, neat skirt and argyle sweater, she had never felt more out of place in her life. Why, oh why, oh _why_ had she decided to go to an arts school that required auditions? Her safety school had a theatre major, one that didn't require auditions, but her Dad had to go and gently remind her that if she really wanted to devote the rest of her life to the arts, she would be constantly auditioning and wouldn't it be nice to get some practice?

Yeah, right. Practice. How had she come to this point, again?

It's sad to say, but it all started with_ Annie_.

Like most little girls growing up in the early 1990s, Christine had caught one too many reruns of the Aileen Quinn version on television. And like many little girls, full of the defiance of youth and many parental assurances that she was the prettiest, most special, most talented little girl in the world, she thought, watching the orphans prance across the screen, belting at the tops of their lungs, _I can do that._

But now it was a different world, much less cozy than dancing slightly off-beat on her living room rug (for all that her vocal instructors praised her singing ability, Christine had never quite managed to work out dancing without falling down). Nope. Now she had somehow gone from staring at green grass to beige columns, to sitting in some sort of holding cell with marble floors and vaulted ceilings. A less savvy person than she might call this place the "lobby," but Christine wasn't fooled. It was a torture chamber, cleverly disguised with crown moldings and innocuous, gilded signs that said things like, 'Box Office' and 'Restrooms.' Clearly code for 'Waterboarding' and 'Iron Maiden.'

Christine had a mild tendency toward temporary insanity when she was nervous. And dear god, was she ever nervous. Glancing around the lobby did nothing to alleviate those nerves and looking at her fellow auditionees was not remotely helpful since she was surrounded by girls who were ten times prettier than her, with apparently twice the dancing ability and she just kind of wanted to crawl into a hole and die. What was she doing there, again? And, why, oh why, did she pick a song from _The Music Man_? Really, she might as well have gone with "Everything's Coming Up Roses" - oh wait. No, even better, "Tomorrow." Yeah. She should have gone with "Tomorrow," it would spare her the indignity of actually singing. The accompanist would look at the sheet music and laugh and then the program manager will laugh and everyone else in the lobby would laugh and then the building itself would quake with laughter and fall down on top of her and Christine, knowing her luck wouldn't even be granted the dignity of a quick death, she would just be paralyzed from the eyeballs down and not even able to _sing_ anymore which would probably be for the best, since she sucks anyway -

"Daee. Christina Daee."

Oh shit. She was up.


	2. My White Knight

It didn't even amaze her that they got her last name right and not the first. For those who knew her well, that was an indication that Christine was right on the cusp of shock and comatose. Fortunately, she was more the former than the latter since she was able to walk over to the dark haired woman with the clip board who had called her name. The pressure on her arm, however, as her dad squeezed her shoulder and whispered, "Break a leg, sweetie," went entirely unnoticed. She managed to regain some semblance of normal cognitive functioning en route and she even tried to tell the woman that her name was Christine, not Christina – but, alas, a moment too late and they were in the audition room.

An audition room with mirrored walls and wasn't that... oh, god. A dance room. Christine was auditioning in a dance room. Immediately, worst case scenario thoughts began running rampant through her mind. Was she suppose to dance? They said prepare two monologues and one song. Nothing about dancing. Was this a surprise dance audition? Oh god, she wasn't supposed to be here, she's not a dancer, she's barely a singer – actually, one thing she was _really_ good at was stage fainting. If she just pretended to faint, she could be carried out and then not -

"What are you going to sing for us, Miss Day?" Somehow the familiar mispronunciation jolted something awake inside Christine.

"It's, um, Daee. Christine Daee," she said nervously, twirling a lock of hair around her finger in a tell-tale nervous reaction.

Really, how hard was it to get her name right? Daee. Like 'die,' with an 'a' on the end. Like, 'I am about to die at this audition,' which was pretty much what Christine was feeling at this moment in time.

The man who had spoken to her did not even glance down at the list in front of him before he smiled apologetically and said, "Miss Daee. Sorry, it's been a long morning." Christine instantly liked him. For one thing, he was dressed _really_ well, in a pinstripe suit, no less. He was of average height and slender build, probably not much older than her father, maybe forty-something, but his hair was already gray all over and he wore a pair of thin, wire spectacles and he kind of...okay, he kind of _really_ looked like Tim Gunn of _Project Runway _fame. And sounded like him too. "What will you be singing for us? Or would you prefer to do one of your monologues first?"

His nice smile and open manner gave Christine another shot in the arm of confidence. This was something she'd been worrying over. Would it be better to get the monologues out of the way and impress them with her singing? Because, of the two, she always felt better singing than acting. Or would they even keep her around to hear her once they heard her shaky rendering of Viola? That icy cold jolt of fear was what made her reply, a little too quickly, "Oh no, I can sing - I mean, I'd like to sing. First. Sing first." Great, now she sounded like a cave woman.

But the pinstripe suit man didn't seem to notice. "That's terrific, Christine. If you could just give your sheet music to our accompanist, you can begin as soon as you're ready." Oh crappola. Right. Give the sheet music to the accompanist. Rule number one when auditioning with a song. Blushing furiously, Christine nodded and kept a cheerful, if somewhat frightened smile on her face and made her way over to the piano and the person sitting behind it. She didn't register much about the accompanist except for the fact that he was male because her eyes didn't ascend any higher than the top buttons on his black shirt.

"Thank you," she whispered softly as the slightly wrinkled pages were plucked from her white-knuckled hands. Swallowing nervously, she made her way back over to the little red X on the floor that was apparently where she was going to be singing from. "Um, I'll be singing "My White Knight" from The Music Man."

A small sound of what might have been either approval or indigestion rippled through the two men - it was always men, wasn't it? - sitting behind the long table. She decided it must be the latter when the smaller, dark skinned man muttered to Mr Pinstripes, "Thank God. If I had to listen to one more little white girl sing "Your Daddy's Hands" I was going to shoot myself."

Christine's smile widened a little and she commented, "Well, I figured I'd play to my strengths. My strengths being that I'm a little white girl." And this was the ultimate little white girl anthem. The gentlemen laughed and she even heard a snort of something like laughter from the man at the piano behind her. Instantly, she decided that she wanted the bald guy to be her very best friend in the whole world. Even though she'd been doing theatre since she was but a wee Christine, she never had the required Gay Best Friend and this gentleman had Fabulous written all over him. Not that he was in a gold sequined gown, no, but even in something as conservative as a striped button-down, suede vest and patterned scarf, he somehow exuded fantastic diva awesomeness that Christine had always admired and never been able to pull off for herself.

"Whenever you're ready, Christine," Pinstripes McGee said, leaning back in his chair to watch her. Christine glanced over her shoulder and nodded at the accompanist, again, not really taking him in, before she said, "I'm ready.

_My white knight, not a Lancelot, nor an angel with wings  
Just someone to love me, who is not ashamed of a few nice things.  
My white knight who knew what my heart would say if it only knew how.  
Please, dear Venus, show me now..."_

It really was a very beautiful song, when performed properly, not - her voice teacher in high school had informed her through gritted teeth – transposed down two keys and sung by Galinda and her Giant Man Jaw of Doom. Luckily, neither Christine's range, nor her jaw proved an obstacle to her performance. This song won her the role of Johanna in her high school's production of _Sweeney Todd_ last year and considering that she'd gone to a well-regarded performing arts high school, that wasn't anything to shake a stick at. Of course, all prior accomplishments meant absolutely nothing right now. Yeah, sure, she'd given a copy of her resume (such as it was) to the woman who escorted her in, but everything pretty much banked on how she did _right now_. Now, one would think that, being at such an important audition, Christine would be throwing her heart and soul into her song. And she was. Sort much of her heart and soul that she could spare from her self-deprecating inner monologue: 

_Oh Jesus, I hope I don't look constipated. I always look constipated when they play the opening, it's because that's my listening face, I can't help if my listening face makes me look like I have gas. Ew. That's gross. Really gross, Christine...oh my god. Oh my god. What if I fart in the middle of my song? Like, on a high note? Oh my god, I would just...die. Yes. That's it. I'd fall down dead, it would be better if I just had a heart attack in the middle of it. That's way more dignified. So much better than just...ew. Ew. I am so immature. I can't believe I'm going to college, I'm so immature. Well, maybe I'm not going to college. They probably hate me. Do they hate me? No! Do NOT look at them! Kiss of death to a performer, do not look the audience in the eyes! Don't do it! Don't look! They'll burn you with...lasers or...oh. Okay, they're not really paying attention at all. Awesome. So I'm boring. Really, really boring. Did you seriously think you could just stand there and sing? God. God, you are such a bad actress._

When the final notes of the piano died out, Christine just stood there, fear evident in her eyes as the men glanced up from their yellow legal pads to finally look at her. "That was..." the older, grey haired guy began and Christine prepared herself instantly for rejection, for a pleasant, thanks, but no thanks and a hard boot out the door. "Beautiful."

She must have looked stunned because his darker companion gave her a beaming smile and an encouraging nod. "Seriously, honey, you've got some serious skill. Great choice."


	3. Defying Gravity

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Any musicals, plays or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

Well, to get rave reviews from a fabulous little bald queen was a high that she was still flying on at the end of the audition. However well Viola went (or didn't), Christine didn't notice. She didn't even pay attention during her contemporary monologue and, honestly, she never thought she was a good choice for Harper anyway and most of what Tony Kushner wrote was over her head. Clearly she was just as invested in her monologues as she had been in her vocal performance, but something of the compliment afterglow remained because when she looked at her two...casting directors? Essentially, she supposed, they both had big smiles on their faces, so Christine smiled back. They just sort of sat there smiling at each other for a few minutes until the bespeckled gentleman (Would it be not PC to call him 'the white guy'? Even if it was just in her head? Yeah, probably), gestured to a chair that was pushed at the table in front of them.

For a second, Christine just stood there like an idiot, not really sure what they expected of her, even though the message 'sit down' seemed clear enough when the bald gentleman chuckled and said, "C'mon over, sweetie, we don't bite." Then she giggled like the idiot she was sure they were convinced she was and took her seat, her face going red, right down to the roots of her light blonde hair. Curse of fair skin, she turned as red as a sunburned tomato when she got embarrassed. Fortunately, the men in front of her were too tactful to say anything. The bald guy seemed to take pity on her, poor, overwhelmed dumbass that she was presenting herself to be and so asked her a softball question, "So, you want to major in theatre, Christine?"

"Oh, yes," she said in a guileless, enthusiastic way that was sure to either get her into a lot of trouble or just convince people that she's a moron and they should give her a wide berth in the future. Realizing that she should probably not just stop there, Christine stuttered out, "Well, I mean, I love theatre and I...I think I'm good at it. At singing and acting, I mean. I've been doing it for years, nothing – I mean, not on _Broadway _or anywhere famous -"

"Don't worry, neither have the rest of us," interjected Mr McEyeglasses with a smile. His hairless partner looking slightly affronted, prompting a light sigh and shake of his head. "Walking down Broadway doesn't count. Now, of course, Christine you realize that obtaining a BFA in performance is not a guarantee of a starring role the second you get off the bus. It is an unbelievably competitive industry, growing moreso hourly. I want our students to come out with a certain set of skills that will allow them to succeed in this profession. We're not a conservatory program and I don't measure success in fame -"

"But if you get some of that, don't forget us when you're rich and famous," Bald Fellow interrupted, smiling benignly. It was like...the Bravo TV version of Good Cop Bad Cop. Christine chose to tread carefully and kept that sweet, slightly vacant smile plastered on her face. Not that she had much choice, it was the only smile she had.

"Oh yeah, no I mean, yeah, I get it." And she was articulate, too. Still smiling that awkward smile, Christine charged on, determined to keep speaking in hopes that something identifiable as a sentence would come out of her mouth eventually. "I mean, I just want to...act. I don't care if I make a lot of money – or any money – I mean, I want to make enough money to get by, but I don't expect to become...Idina Menzel overnight. I mean, Idina Menzel didn't even become her overnight...um...wait, that came out weird. But yeah, I mean, she worked hard and she became _really_ successful, but I know that people can work hard and maybe not get that successful and I'm okay with that. I just love theatre and I want to have credentials so that I can do it forever. And I really love what I know about this program, since I definitely didn't want to go to a conservatory. I mean, nothing _against_ conservatories, I just don't have the...discipline? Um. I mean, I'm disciplined, but...let me try again. Hi, I'm Christine Daee, I'm going to be performing "My White Knight" from Meredith Wilson's _The Music Man_."

The men in front of her laughed and exchanged a look that she interpreted as being full of pity. Well, that was just fine by her, if pity was what was going to get her into this school, then she'd take whatever hand out she could get. "Don't worry honey, you're doing fine," said Mr Bald. "Actually, we're the ones who screwed up, you got your introductions right, that's the most important part of an audition, after all." The straightest, whitest teeth Christine had ever seen were flashed briefly at her before he continued introducing himself and his partner. It was actually kind of a relief for Christine, since she could finally stop referring to them by inappropriate nicknames based upon race or male pattern baldness. "I'm Chester Goldman, resident costume designer, this is Timothy Reyer, department chair and head of the directing track."

Two thoughts flashed through Christine's mind after this: the first thing was relief that she could finally stop differentiating between the two of them in her mind by use of none too clever nicknames that referred to their ethnicity or tendency toward male pattern baldness. The second thought was, _I'm being judged by a costume designer? That doesn't seem fair_.

As if prompted through psychic abilities, Timothy Reyer said, "The head of our Acting Department, Ann Giry, is performing at Memorial Rep in their production of _A Little Night Music_, she's at a matinee right now, I'm afraid, she would have loved to have seen you."

Christine kept smiling blandly, but her heart was sinking. Wow. First, she's a complete spaz during her audition. Then, she makes an ass of herself by bringing up the fact that their program wasn't a conservatory. And apparently, she shouldn't have worried at ALL since the head of the Acting Department is off frolicking to Sondheim and they probably already had their freshman class picked out and she was just one of the nameless hundreds who wasn't getting seriously considered at all. "Oh. Okay," she said, utterly unsure where to take the conversation from there. Should she just leave? Spare them the 'thanks, but no thanks,' or the even more dubious, 'we'll keep in touch'? God, that one was the worst. Kept you waiting by the phone for a callback for days, only to see the cast list go up on the company website and your name nowhere to be seen. Yeah, Christine had experienced her fair share of disappointment in the long eighteen years of her life. She was no stranger to pain.

"Well, she can get over it later," Mr Goldman said, standing up and smiling, extending his hand to Christine, in what she took to be a gesture of polite dismissal. Christine extended her own hand, smile fading as he continued, "Classes start on September 3rd, call us for anything you need before then. Congratulations, sweetie, you're in."

It probably took a solid ten seconds for the statement to sink in. And of course, once it did, Christine expressed her gratitude in the only appropriate way, "Wait...what? Are you...you're kidding?"

Mr Reyer smiled and shook his head, extending his own hand, "You gave a fantastic performance, Christine, I think you would fit in well with the class we're trying to build. You have a really remarkable voice, fantastic, really." What Mr Reyer neglected to say was that they hadn't seen any truly adequate lyric sopranos that day and really needed to pad out their freshman class, but why crush the poor girl's tentatively built confidence. "Of course, if you would like to consider other offers, we understand. You have until August 15th to accept or deny admission -"

Tentative was right. It wasn't as if Christine had the proverbial little gray cloud following her, raining down droplets of low self-esteem constantly, but it wasn't every day a well-regarded theatre school just offered you admission face-to-face. "Oh my God," she said breathlessly. "No, I mean, yes! Yes, I would like to come to school here. I would _love_ to come to school here, oh my God, thanks _so_ much!" She was smiling so hard she thought her face might crack, but who cared if her face fell off, she would just pick it up off the floor and skip down the hallway to the nearest plastic surgeon because she was _ACCEPTED!_ For a performer who thrived on positive recognition, there was no better high than being assured that, yes, _you like me, you really like me! _

She was handed a few brochures about campus life and the theatre department specifically and sent off with more fond farewells and handshakes. Christine was so shocked and happy that she was pretty sure that she didn't quite have the language skills to communicate to her dad the simple fact that she was IN! But her dad was a perceptive kind of fellow. Never let it be said that Gus Daee was the sort of fellow who could look at his daughter, smiling in a way that could light up a room and _not_ know that her audition had been a great success? "Went well?" he asked mildly, drawing an arm around Christine's shoulder and leading her out to the car (since she looked about ready to fall down from shock).

Beaming up at her father, Christine threw her arms around him, pamphlets and all, and sighed contentedly before saying, "Yeah, it was okay." And even though her father had expressedly forbidden her from playing _Wicked_ in his presence, he had relented on this day of stress, since Christine insisted that she had to listen to something that was really really really bad in order to relax, that way she'd content herself knowing that utterly talentless people succeeded in musical theatre. It would boost her confidence people, she told him. And it wasn't really a lie...she just pointedly left out the fact that she really liked _Wicked_. She really didn't understand why her dad expressed such overt loathing of the show, but then, he was a musician and the music was...well, she thought it was _fun_ and, hey, she'd just gotten out of the lion's den back there and she was determined to listen to something _fun!_ It was a credit to her father's patience and endless affection for his daughter that he not only tolerated her turning the volume of the radio all the way up, lowering all the windows and belting at the top of her lungs,

_"__It's time to try  
Defying gravity  
I think I'll try  
Defying gravity  
And you can't pull me down!"_

Of course, Gus' patience only extended so far. As soon as they crossed the Massachusetts border and Christine slumped against her car seat, drooling slightly on her seatbelt, that he reached over to the radio and removed the CD, replacing it with _André Rieu: Live in Vienna_. If Christine wanted to listen to fun music, that was all well and good, but he would at least try to infiltrate her subconscious with _good_ fun music. It was his duty as a father.


	4. Bring Him Home

AN: For everyone who likes this story: thanks for reading! I promise it will pick up a bit, just as soon as the main cast is assembled. Right now I'm trying to backstory so everything makes sense. I'm pulling inspiration from just about every version of the story there is, see if you can spot the references! And please do review, I read all of them and really appreciate any feedback you can give, at least let me know I'm entertaining people out there!

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Any musicals, plays or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

"_God on high, hear my prayer._

_In my need, you have always been there._

_He is young, he's afraid_

_Let him rest, heaven blessed. _

_Bring him -_"

"Thank you," Tim said, glancing up from the resume of the young man in front of him. "That will be all. We'll let you know." There really was nothing like sitting in an uncomfortably warm room at the beginning of what promised to be a swelteringly hot summer listening to seventeen year old, acne ridden boys warble out songs intended for fifty year old men. It was a sight to behold, really. And speaking of angsty teenagers pathetically showing their age...

"Can I go home now?"

The room that Christine had just left was not only a torture chamber of sorts to those anxious masses who were forced to perform for their lives (or the suffering men whose job it was to judge them). Lowly accompanists had to share in the suffering as well.

Erik truly had not known what he got himself into when Tim called and said, "Hey, can you come down and play the piano at auditions for a few hours? As a favor?" Granted, it was seven o'clock in the morning when his phone rang and he really didn't do his best cognitive functioning until closer to noon. Technically, he was not certain that the garbled grunt he responded with actually counted as an affirmative reply, but Tim seemed to think it did, since he was quick to shoot back, "Great, see you in an hour," before he hung up the phone on him.

Now, given that his home was only about fifteen minutes from campus by bicycle, one might not think that asking Erik to be there in an hour was asking for anything too complicated, but, of course, he knew that he was going to be cutting it close. For the first ten minutes after being rudely awakened by the irritating buzzing of his cell phone, he did nothing more productive than lie in bed and curse God, Buddha, Odin and every other mythical creature he could think of that might have some reason to meddle in his life and cause it to turn so violently against him. Erik often found himself cursing God at odd moments, just because he thought his life was a great deal more complicated than it had to be, most of the time. And really, he was fragile. A delicate flower of rare and exquisite blossom. Not made for rising from bed before ten in the morning. Though his mother often complained that he seemed _never_ to sleep, that was entirely untrue. He slept soundly between the hours of 4am and 10am, no more, no less. Six hours was all anyone _really_ needed to function, all the most respectable mattress commercials said so.

After his ten minute bitchfest to all concerned heavenly powers, Erik rolled out of bed and stumbled off into the bathroom to put on his face – literally. It was something he'd concerned himself with for years now, so he didn't really pay the process a great deal of notice, just glancing into the mirror to make sure that no one who saw him would run screaming in horror. It had happened previously, of course, but usually after the screamer in question was already acquainted with him. Ahmed had been known to douse him with Holy Water on occasion, which was a laugh and a half considering the fact that he was a Muslim. He did have the cultural sensibilities to apply antiperspirant, brush his teeth and put clean clothes on, but that really didn't help the fact that he had a natural tendency to repel more people than he attracted. Whether by design or the simple fact of being an ornery teenage boy, Erik did not like people and people, as a rule, did not generally like him. Except for short-staffed theatre directors and their boyfriends, it seemed.

Well, insensitive youth though he may be, Erik was not going to ignore a summons from someone in need. And so, as soon as he was dressed, not smelling horrendous, it was off to St Mary's...just as soon as he got a coffee. Technically a medium iced hazelnut with two shots of espresso, whole milk and extra sugar, but still, coffee it was and ordinarily he could duck in and out of his favorite on-campus psuedo-bistro (aptly named 'The Bistro'), but being that it was seven-fifty in the morning at this point, the place was packed to the gills with zombie-like masses, so it took a few minutes more than he was expecting it to. Some might have called ahead if they knew they were going to be late, but Erik decided that, since he had been awakened at an ungodly hour that morning by a needy, balding dictator, he had at _least_ a fifteen minute grace period before he could actually be considered "late."

At eighteen years of age, Erik wasn't terribly concerned with how people perceived him and he had a reputation for being...abrasive. Which was probably why, after strolling into the audition room five minutes late (twenty minutes late, actually, thank the gods for fifteen minute grace periods), he was frogmarched to the piano bench by Chester and Tim both and told, in no uncertain terms, that he was to sit, shut up, play the piano and under no circumstances was he to say _anything_. To _anyone._

"What if I have to use the facilities?" Erik asked blandly, mightily resisting the urge to roll his eyes since that might be against the new rules and restrictions that had been imposed upon him.

"Hold it," Chester said bluntly. And at that, both of them turned and sat down behind the table and there they remained until the nervous blonde girl exited the room and Erik had the idle thought that he might be free now.

Of course, he understood the logic behind why he had been effectively silenced for the better part of the morning/afternoon (it had to be afternoon by now, his ass had fallen asleep and pain reawakened itself at least seven times). Erik was, to use the most apropos turn of phrase, an incorrigible asshole. He could never stop himself, he always had some kind of douchey comment or sarcastic sneer. It was not a particularly attractive personality trait, but really, after dealing with theatre people for all of his life, he could not help being somewhat disillusioned with watching dozens of pressed, primped and chipper teenagers march in and sing their earnest little hearts out. And, as was to be expected when dealing with theatre auditions for a semi-prestigious liberal arts college located on the prettier half of the Ocean State, most of the applicants...well, sucked. In one way or another. Every person who seemed to have musical talent had the acting chops of a drugged Keanu Reeves. Everyone who delivered a truly inspired monologue, when they opened their mouths to sing, either were painful to listen to or sang something truly atrocious from _RENT_ or some Andrew Lloyd Webber musical fiasco that made Erik disqualify them immediately from consideration – or he would have if he was allowed to say anything.

Really, he deserved some recognition for being so cooperative. Erik didn't utter a word the whole time, just played the pieces – the majority of them from memory, so he could just stare off into space or, when no one was paying attention, sneak a sip off of his rapidly melting iced coffee during a particularly melodramatic trill. He was privately of the opinion that this audition process was really a spectacular waste of time. Theatre BAs they had in abundance, that was the bread and butter of the department and one did not need to audition in order to take the classes necessary to mass the 30 credits that would grant them a major. These were auditions for the BFA track and it was the 'F' that made all the difference. There were no less than eight, no more than fifteen students accepted to the BFA program, where they worked in close association with Memorial Repertory Company, one of the premiere repertory theatres in New England and most of the company was formed already, by virtue of nepotism alone.

For example, Ann Giry's daughter, Margaret, had an automatic 'in,' even though Erik privately felt that for all she had to offer in dance, her acting skills were sadly lacking. Ahmed's dad was an English professor, so it didn't matter whether or not he had any particular theatrical talent, he was guaranteed admission to the school in whatever capacity he so desired. Fortunately, he was moderately talented – but Erik would be thrice damned if Ahmed heard him admit as much. Really, the rest of the freshman class - "company" as Tim insisted they be called, since he was all about fostering "an authentic theatrical learning environment" - read like a veritable who's who of department staff. Charlotte Mendoza's mother was the general manager of Memorial Rep, Armand Moncharmin's dad was their accountant, Fred Richard's mother was head seamstress and his father worked in the scene shop for years, the list went on in the same vein. Erik, of course, was privy to all this information because his mother had been a member of Memorial Rep for twenty years and his father was master electrician, when he wasn't gallivanting around the country with one touring company of something or other. So, technically, yes, he too had an automatic in, but at least he had the talent to back it up – and Erik was talented. Just ask him, he would be the first person to alert the media to that fact. Musically gifted, a good actor and even a skilled dancer. It was what came of being largely brought up in and around theatres, except for those few, unfortunate middling years where he saw far more than he wanted to of the interior of hospitals. But that was all past. He was going off to school...a school where his mother as an adjunct professor, but at least he was getting his own place. With a roommate. Two roommates. But who was counting? He was going to be independent and with his long, skinny figures clasped firmly around a diploma in four years and then he would be out and away from the people he had seen every day of his life since infancy.

People like Timothy Reyer-Goldman and Chester Reyer-Goldman who felt like they had the right to summon him to perform like an organ grinder's monkey at a moment's notice and had denied him (twice now) the perfectly reasonable request to go to the bathroom. For long stretches he had been able to ignore the call of nature since all the kids lined up to audition seemed to blend into each other after a while, but this latest girl that they were coming all over themselves because of the latest blonde haired blue eyed darling who had just swept out in a whirlwind of nerves. Frankly, he was just happy that they'd found _someone_ they had apparently never seen before in their lives to round out the incoming class. And because they had gone outside their comfort zone, Erik felt that his job there was done and he should be free to vacate. Apparently they had other ideas.

"Auditions are until 2:30," Tim said, shuffling through a pile of resumes and headshots, apparently trying to organize them in a half-hearted sort of way. This prompted Erik to sigh and throw himself backward over the piano bench, one hand over his heart as if he were experiencing a moment of supreme agony.

"Oh shut up, Erik, you're such a bitch," Chester said, leaning back in his chair and shaking his head at the ceiling.

"I learned from the best," the moody teenager shot back, not straightening up from his swoon over the bench. "I have to use the bathroom. What do you want me to do, pee on the floor? That's disgusting, Chester, I can't believe you would suggest such a thing."

Apparently Chester didn't think he had to dignify that with a response, so he just rolled his eyes and said, "Pee break, then make the little monster go back to work?"

"This isn't work," Erik said irritably, "this is slavery. It isn't like I'm being _paid_. I have better things to do than this. I could have gone to M.I.T."

"Not for free you couldn't," Tim pointed out dryly, not having lifted his eyes to view this latest display of infantile theatrics. He had known Erik too long to be affected by his pathos shtick. "Besides, we raised you, you owe us."

It takes a village, people. And sometimes, it takes the Village People. Erik often liked to complain that one of the major contributing factors to his myriad personality disorders had to do with the fact that he was raised, at least in part, by drag queens, the social equivalent of being raised by wolves – well-dressed wolves with great hair and beautiful legs – but his mother would sedately reply that he was alive and well today and came out of the experience with impeccable dress sense. That might be true, but Erik really didn't think he _owed _Tim and Chester anything in particular. And he especially didn't have to play the role of performing ape for them. "You didn't _have_ to come down, you know," Tim said, glancing up at him. "You could have stayed at home and slept. We could have found someone else."

Erik made a derisive noise in the back of his throat, "Yeah right. You keep telling yourself that. This place _needs_ me. Fuck you people, I'm going to the bathroom." And with that, he straightened up and stood in one smooth motion, gliding swiftly from the room with a haughty glance down at the two men behind the table, presumably to void his bowels – in the most haughty and dignified way possible, of course.

Chester shook his head and looked at the door that Erik had slammed shut in his wake. "Kids get cranky when they don't get enough sleep, huh?" Tim shook his head, closing his eyes and rubbing his closed eyelids in subtle exasperation. Chester smiled at him and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. "Two hours more, honey, that's it. Then we can set the baby down for a nap." Glancing back at the door he pondered aloud, "Think we should admit that he's right?"

Tim glanced down at the man he had chosen to spend the rest of his life with in frank astonishment, looking at him as though he'd never quite seen him before. "Absolutely not. I am determined not to give him the satisfaction."


	5. Blow, Gabriel, Blow

AN: This chapter doesn't do much to forward the plot, my Erik muse just decided that he wanted more screen time, so I took the opportunity to delve slightly into his psyche.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Any musicals, plays or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_Come on you scamps, get up you sinners!  
You're all too full of expensive dinners.  
Stand up on your lazy feet and sing!_

_Oh, blow, Gabriel, blow,  
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow!  
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp,  
But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp,  
So blow, Gabriel, blow!_

_-Anything Goes  
_

Two hours later, Erik was finally free. It was a small victory, in the grand scheme of his life and the compensation he received for services rendered was not great. While adults with clout in his position might have been able to finagle a few hundred dollars for supplying the needed skill and attention span to accompany the potentially college-bound of questionable talent for the better part of the morning, all Erik got was a promise from Tim that he would personally finance a trip for Erik and a friend of his choosing to attend a showing of the latest _Star Trek_ movie at the IMAX. It wasn't that Erik was ungrateful for this offer, but still, thirty dollars for a movie and popcorn did not really make up for the fact that he had to sacrifice three hours of sleep and part of his questionable sanity for the cause.

More troubling was the fact that he was now awake and guaranteed to remain that way until four o'clock in the morning rolled around, at which point, he would decisively turn off his cell phone and sleep as much as he pleased, demands on his time be damned! Then, of course, he would ignore the inevitable disappointment when he turned his phone back on the next morning and discovered that no one had called him at all. Ah well, such was life. Others in this predicament might just shun societal customs that dictated human beings were to be awake and active during the afternoon hours and crawl back into bed to make up for lost time, but Erik was not one of those people. Not that he was in any way condoning keeping a normal schedule for the sake of it, but the fact of the matter was that he did not nap. Not in any way. He was incapable of doing so and had driven his mother up a wall after refusing to participate in that sad fact of toddler life at age two. It was uncomfortable to sleep in the middle of the day and wake up again as the sun was falling from the sky, mind muddled and filled with a deep sense of shame for having somehow wasted a day of your life in slumber. At least that was what Ahmed told him it was like, but he was an odd duck, known for taking "death naps." The sort where one intended to get twenty minutes of shut-eye and then woke eight hours later in the middle of the night feeling like death warmed over. Hardly appealing.

Mounting his bicycle, he at first rode idly around the campus, darting out in front of cars and veering up onto sidewalks, causing various campus tour groups to jump aside at the last possible moment. All he needed was a cape and a wide-brimmed black hat and he would be every inch an environmentally conscious Zorro (channeling the Tyrone Power version, or, if he couldn't pull that off, at least Guy Williams). Having largely been raised by actors, drag queens and Turner Classic Movies, Erik's greatest childhood ambitions largely consisted of growing up to become a swashbuckler. Or Batman. Clearly, neither attainable goals and he realized that fairly early on in his development. Still, there was a childish side of him that decided even if he couldn't run around terrorizing people in a black mask, he could at least ride his bike at dangerous speeds through a quiet, New England college town. Of course, this form of entertainment was only so stimulating and it was only ten minutes later that he put his headphones in and was listening to the _De-Lovely_ soundtrack which, though epic in it's own Cole Porter kind of way, was not something one generally used as the background music for causing minor chaos and mayhem. No, for that he would need Beethoven and he wasn't in a Romantic mood.

The thought of returning home did occur to him, but his father was newly returned from New York where he had been designing lights and sound for an off-Broadway production of some show that Erik hadn't cared to remember. He never discussed theatre with his dad, it was an unspoken rule between the two of them that his mother had been trying to puzzle out for years, but both father and son had been uncharacteristically silent on the point. They would discuss anything else, electrical engineering, time travel, the absurdity of Legolas Greenleaf as a sex symbol and the fact that light saber technology was theoretically viable, but not theatre. When Mom tried to bring it up, they would artfully steer the conversation in another direction. Charlie Theroux thought of his profession as just that: a job. It paid the bills (more or less) and he enjoyed it, sure, but he wasn't about to go off on a riff about 'his art' as Madeline had a tendency to do. Erik understood and appreciated that about his father and was more than happy to let him leave his work at work, if that was what it pleased him to do. But he was not going to be discussing anything with either father or mother today. Erik had a slightly off-kilter version of the typical teenager's relationship with his parents. He liked them as much as anyone could like their parents, but he also understood their very real flaws. For example, his parents were the sort of people who should never have children. Fortunately, they had not, they only had the one child: him. And that was all they were capable of handling, on a good day. To put it simply, his mother was a bitch and his father was a space cadet, so naturally they got along swimmingly. It was a really great marriage, Dad would wander off into the basement to play video games and Mom would go out with her friends and then they'd hang out sometimes, like right now they were probably celebrating their month-long separation with a marathon of sex and Erik really did not want to be home for that. So what was a poor, neglected, temporarily parentless boy to do (because parents ceased being parents when they were having sex, clearly)?

Well, the answer to that was clear: bother Ahmed. If they were going to be living together, Erik would have to make the effort to be twice as obnoxious as usual, just to condition him to the ins and outs of daily life with him. Freddy could find out what hellfire he had sighed up for after he moved in. With a decisive flourish of his hand, Erik skipped ahead in the CD to "Blow Gabriel Bow" and made for Ahmed's parent's place, a cute little cottage with a white porch and flower garden that he rolled into, careful to avoid flattening Mrs Yari's daffodils. Though he could probably just enter through the front door, things just didn't work that way between him and Ahmed. Entering through front doors was not his preferred way of gaining access to a building since he was probably going to run into Professor Yari and then he'd want to _talk_ and Erik didn't particularly enjoy chatting up people's parents. It was inevitably awkward and Erik didn't like feeling awkward, so he just avoided the interaction altogether and climbed in through Ahmed's window to hang out with him.

It was accepted as a given that his friend would be home, it wasn't like Ahmed had _that_ many friends, certainly, he didn't have a lot of friends that Erik didn't already know, so the chance that he would be out and about with imaginary friends that he didn't have was minimal. This hunch was proved true when Erik clambered in through the window over Ahmed's bed and his foot came in contact with something slightly more solid than than the mattress, something that made an annoyed, pained sound when his shoe hit it. "Fuck!" Ahmed swore, rolling off the bed and onto the floor, blinking sleep out of his eyes as he looked up at Erik with irritation evident in his bleary green eyes. "Fucker. What the fuck?"

"What do you mean, 'what the fuck'?" Erik asked, glancing at Ahmed's alarm clock. "It's three in the afternoon, wake up already."

"I was awake," his friend grumbled, grabbing a sweatshirt from the floor and throwing it over his head to act as an ineffective shield against the world. "I was trying to take a nap. I had an early shift at work this morning."

"How early?" Erik asked, sitting down cross-legged atop Ahmed's bed and peering down at him curiously.

Since it was clear that Erik was not a figment of his imagination, nor was he going to depart any time soon, Ahmed sat up a bit, dark curly hair ruffled from both sleep and his encounter with his carpet. "Ten," he replied with a grimace. "Ten to two." For a moment, Erik just blinked at him, unsure whether scorn or pity was the correct emotion to feel for this creature who knew so little of pain. Ten to two. He should have been so lucky. And it wasn't like Ahmed did anything taxing, he worked in a _library_ for fuck's sake, the worst thing that could ever happen to him was the occasional paper cut. "Poor baby," Erik intoned expressionlessly. "Well, wake up, I'm in a crappy mood and it is your job to cheer me up.

Blinking again at Erik as though he was some strange apparition, Ahmed shook his head and said, "What's wrong with you? Well, aside from the obvious." It would do no good to insist that Erik leave, when he parked his scrawny ass somewhere, he was going to leave it there until his ADD kicked in and he decided that he had to _do_ something. Which would probably occur in about ten minutes if he was any judge of Erik's character.

The character in question threw himself dramatically over Ahmed's bed – that was one of Erik's weirder personality traits. Whenever he felt like he had something important to say, he had a tendency to throw himself on the ground or over whatever flat surface was nearby that he thought would help get his point across more effectively. It probably had to do with the fact that they were forced to read _Frankenstein _in high school and was apparently quite taken with Dr. F's tendency to swoon at regular intervals and so, had taken it on as a part of his own personal character. But anyway, Erik was swooning and so Ahmed decided that he had to pay attention. "I was just _tortured_. For six and a half hours. In a sweltering room, no food, no water, I was _caged_, Ahmed. It was not long before I forgot entirely what human kindness looked like. I became little more than an animal, forced to perform by my captors - "

"Tim made you play the piano at auditions again?" Ahmed asked, raising an eyebrow, utterly nonplussed by Erik's tale of woe.

"_Yes_," his friend hissed angrily. "It was awful, Ahmed, truly awful – well, there were a few people who weren't _as_ awful, but they did nothing to make up for the vast majority of the talentless."

"That's too bad. But look on the bright side, it's not like you're going to have to see any of them ever gain - "

"Not true," he said, sitting up on the bed at last. "They offered a position to a female. She was tiny and blonde, apparently with some sort of accompanying nervous condition. I assume she will suffer some form of breakdown within the first few weeks of school and be found hanging from a shower rod, having shuffled off this mortal coil quietly and without much dignity."

Wow. Great. Suicide fantasies and Ahmed hadn't even eaten lunch yet. Life was really great when you had a friend like Erik, eager to remind everyone of their own mortality at the slightest provocation. "Awesome. Well, do you want to go get lunch or something? I haven't eaten yet. We could go to Applebee's. Or Uno's, do you want pizza? We could get pizza skins."

Erik shrugged and leaned back against Ahmed's headboard. "I'm not hungry. I had coffee. With _milk_," he said, as if he were absurdly pleased with himself on this point."

Rolling his eyes to the heavens, Ahmed said, "Wow, that's really impressive. That's, what, two-hundred calories? You're set for the day. But I still need to eat, so we're going to Uno's. Come on, get up, if you're not going to let me sleep, I'm going to at least get to choose where we're going to eat." And he knew that both of them would be eating, regardless of Erik's opinions to the contrary. Whenever they went out, Erik would invariably grab something off of his plate, but Ahmed could care less, it really just mattered to him that the guy was _eating_. He was skinny as a pole and his parents...well, they were perfectly alright as far as people went, but they didn't exactly keep tabs on his daily caloric intake, so Ahmed had taken it upon himself to make sure that his friend was properly nourished. Even if it meant only getting a third of the pizza skins.


	6. The Internet Is For Porn

AN: Another fairly pointless chapter, though Erik and Christine ALMOST interact. I am at the beck and call of my muses and Erik and Ahmed insisted on talking about female bits and how freaky they are, so here we go. This thing is really just writing itself, I hereby relinquish all responsibility for this shit show.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Neither does Facebook. Any musicals, plays, movies, or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_The internet is for porn!_

_The internet is for porn!_

_Grab your dick and double click_

_For porn, porn, porn!_

_-Avenue Q_

_**Christine Daee has requested your friendship.**_

Huh. He had a new Facebook friend. Erik hadn't really been expecting that – actually, he never expected anyone to friend him on Facebook, largely because his profile picture wasn't a picture of him. It was a picture of a plaster bust of Bach wearing sweet Ray-Ban sunglasses and a trucker hat. He had taken the picture after Ahmed slipped the hat and glasses on the bust when the security guard at the museum had his back turned while Freddy created an effective distraction. It was a 'thing' they did. Freddy had dubbed it Accessorizing Adonis – AA for short, and how much fun was it to tell your mom that the guys were picking you up to go to AA? It had begun years ago, when they were but wee versions of their current vigilante selves, stuck going to field trips because they went to a 'progressive' school and it's a well known fact among the Rhode Island private school sect that the more prestigious the school, the less time you spend in the classroom. And they went on some bizarre field trips to fill the required fifty-trips a year minimum. There had been that memorable trip to the Joseph Smith Memorial Shaft in Vermont that still sent Freddy into fits of giggles every time it was brought up. Of course, not every trip included a Mormon tourguide droning on and on about the "forty ton shaft" while a cadre of tweens tried mightily not to burst out laughing in the middle of his speech. One thing that these places had in common, however, was their love of statuary. There were statues of all sorts of people, some famous, some not. Unlike wax museums, statues were rarely behind velvet ropes or in larger than life dioramas, they were there to be touched and truly _experienced_. Most people contented themselves with taking pictures with statues, usually while engaged in some sort of lewd sexual act with said statue. Well, the prep school boys were slightly more sophisticated than that. They did not molest statues; they dressed them up.

It started with Bach, they hadn't been prepared that day, but Erik had the camera, Freddy the glasses and Ahmed the stupid hat (he was thirteen and not responsible for his sense of fashion, or so he maintained to this day). It was quick, Freddy made a big show of wanting to play the ancient pianoforte in one corner of the room and the security guy was busily trying to dissuade him without actually laying hands on the boy, who was threatening lawsuit if he was 'inappropriately touched.' Erik slipped the hat and glasses on while Ahmed waited, palms sweating, for the flash to go off to get a good picture. The result was slightly blurry, but ultimately triumphant. And so Erik had made that his profile picture, rather than using any of the pictures that unfortunately existed of him. He did not like how he looked in photographs – well, he did not like how he looked period, but he was not one of those people who photographed well. Most posed pictures of him looked awkward (unless he was posed with a statue, because those pictures would be awesome no matter what) and those candid shots of him performing just...yeah, no one ever needed to see the faces that they made on stage captured for eternity in a frozen image.

In addition to that, he didn't have his entire name displayed on Facebook. Not Erik C. Theroux, not even Erik Theroux. Just Erik. Like Spock. Or Cher.

So, the fact that this Miss Daee managed to track him down at all was interesting and mildly unexpected because he assumed that only using his first name and not having a picture of himself would deter people from friending him. He kept his friend's list small, intimate. It was largely made up of people who were twenty years older than him, people from Memorial Rep and their offspring, really, the only people he came in contact with on a regular basis. Charlotte took pride in collecting Facebook friends, he knew, she also had a MySpace list that would rival Vanessa Vodka or whoever that slut with her own VH1 series was. Erik did not have a MySpace. He was above such frivolities.

It took him a minute to even remember who this girl was, he didn't know any Christines, aside from the demonic car from that Stephen King movie and demonic cars most certainly did not start Facebook accounts. The face seemed vaguely familiar, smiling and happy, very pretty, but ultimately generic, in Erik's opinion. It was only a moment later that he noticed that she sent an accompanying message:

_'Hi! I was searching for kids in the St. Mary's BFA program for 2013 and your profile came up. I hope you don't think I'm a total creep for friending you, I just want to get to know people before school starts. Hope to talk to you soon!'_

Aha. Marian the Librarian. Or so he thought about her, since that song was the best part of her performance, the monologues were only so-so (and honestly, the girl was no Viola). For a long moment, Erik sat frowning at the computer screen. He did not accept Facebook friends lightly. If she was going to clutter his newsfeed with nonsense about how she watched the early premiere of _Glee!_ and wasn't that JUST like her life? It was a valid fear to have, between Charlotte's unnatural obsession with _Spring Awakening _and both her and Meg's taking of every quiz offered by the site between them, he already knew more useless things about his female acquaintances than he cared to (apparently, Meg was most like the character Monica on _Friends_ and Charlotte was going to marry a man named Brian). Really, he did not need to know more useless information about s female that he did not even know and was not already a fixture in his life. He ought to have ignored her request outright.

Against his better judgment, Erik clicked on her name. Nothing unusual about her, nothing glaringly obnoxious. Her profile page was pretty minimal and lit looked as though she only took quizzes occasionally (though there was one 'How Well Do YOU Know _Wicked_?' quiz that made him wince). None of her pictures were inherently offensive – yes, of course he immediately went rooting through her pictures. It did not make him a stalker, this young woman was the one who tracked _him_ down, after all, he had to be assured that she was not some kind of serial killer before he accepted any shallow overtures of friendship. In none of them was she falling down drunk, most pictures appeared to be of her in and around her high school theatre. It was no surprise that he had not initially recognized her. She seemed to be happy and worry-free in her pictures and Erik really only vaguely recalled a face that was riddled with anxiety at her audition. Hmm. Well, if she turned out to be obnoxious, he would just take the trouble to block her from his newsfeed. He wouldn't de-friend her unless she did something truly unforgivable.

Against his better judgment, he included a small message as he friended her. Clearly he was growing soft in his old age:

_You aren't creepy. It would have been creepy if you poked me. Actually, I think St. Mary's defines that as a form of sexual harassment, so you have been warned._ _We've met...of a fashion. I was the accompanist at your audition this morning, you did very well with your song._

Then he clicked 'accept,' feeling like he had acted prematurely. Maybe he should have started analyzing her wall posts before he made such a hasty decision. And it seems that he was not the only one to think so, since Ahmed, clearly using the telepathy that he consistently denied he had, chose that moment to comment on him.

**faulknerwasapunk:** who the hell is the hot chick?

**TheZedWord:** Christine?

f**aulknerwasapunk: **christine, whatever. who is she, why have i never met her i know everyone you know, who have you been seeing without me?

**TheZedWord:** I don't know her, she's the girl I told you about, the Music Man girl. The one Tim gave the spot to.

**faulknerwasapunk: **why is she friending you?

**TheZedWord:** She's friendly.

**faulknerwasapunk:** but why specifically to YOU? you're a dickhead. and i mean that in the most loving way possible.

**TheZedWord:** Sure you do. I don't know, she looked up the incoming class and there I was. She'll probably get to you in a few minutes. Are you jealous?

**faulknerwasapunk:** oh yeah. totally jealous of your mad skillz with the ladies.

**TheZedWord:** It's alright, there's no shame in admitting it. Has she added you yet?

**faulknerwasapunk:** i'm refreshing...refreshing...my computer is a piece of crap.

**TheZedWord:** No shit. Get a Mac.

**faulknerwasapunk:** fuck off. i'm a PC.

**TheZedWord:** You're an idiot.

**faulknerwasapunk: **refreshed. oh yeah, she friended me. she's cute.

**TheZedWord:** Don't hold your breath looking for...pictures of her vagina or something vile. She isn't a slut.

**faulknerwasapunk:** ew. why would I ever want to see that?

**TheZedWord:** I don't know. Isn't that what men find attractive?

**faulknerwasapunk:** do you?

**TheZedWord:** No, they scare me.

**faulknerwasapunk:** women?

**TheZedWord:** Vaginas. They're like Sarlaccs without teeth.

**faulknerwasapunk:** sometimes with teeth.

**TheZedWord:** We should never have seen that movie.

**faulknerwasapunk: **no shit. i blame you. you drag me to see those things, i don't like horror movies.

**TheZedWord:** Do you want to see _Drag Me To Hell _this weekend? It's recession-horror.

**faulknerwasapunk:** relevant horror for these difficult economic times? really?

**TheZedWord:** Yes.

**faulknerwasapunk: **how do they manage that?

**TheZedWord:** I'm not telling you. We need to see the movie.

**faulknerwasapunk:** alright fine.

**TheZedWord: **Did you friend that girl?

**faulknerwasapunk: **yeah, she seems nice. also, I think we should go to aa sometime soon. school's been out for three weeks, we're overdue.

**TheZedWord: **True. Seneca Falls? Next weekend?

**faulknerwasapunk: **sure. sounds good. go to bed now.

**TheZedWord:** It's early.

**faulknerwasapunk:** it's two in the morning.

**TheZedWord: **Early.

**faulknerwasapunk: **oh, erik.

**TheZedWord: **Oh, Ahmed. You just masturbate to the image of that girl and I'll see you tomorrow.

**faulknerwasapunk:** that's gross, erik.

**TheZedWord: **Well, I'm a disgusting human being. You'd better go to bed so that I don't corrupt you with my influence.

**faulknerwasapunk: **right. g'night.

**TheZedWord:** G'night

_faulknerwasapunk has signed off_

This evening was really miraculous for his social skills, Erik had to admit. Not only did he have vague plans to see a movie sometime in the near future, he was going on a road trip to dress up statues of dead lesbians this weekend AND he'd made a new Facebook friend. No doubt his therapist would be pleased, if Erik bothered to call to make another appointment for this month. Maybe he would worry about that next week. He'd reached his maximum quota of people-tolerance for this one.


	7. Thoroughly Modern Millie

AN: And switching back to Christine's perspective for this short little chapter, mostly to provide a quick description of what Erik actually looks like. I TRIED to get him to talk about it, but he's decided that it isn't important for people to know. So Christine is going to do it for me, at least explain what Erik looks like to the rest of the world, though, of course, that's not the end of his story...

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Neither does Facebook. Any musicals, plays, movies, or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_Men say, it's criminal, what women'll do._

_What they're forgetting is this is 1922!_

_Goodbye, good goody-girl, I'm changing and how!_

_So beat the drums 'cause here comes thoroughly modern Millie now!_

_-Thoroughly Modern Millie  
_

Christine was lying atop her bed, legs swinging idly over her head as she surfed the interwebs. She was no great computer genius, she basically used it for Facebook, Limewire and Livejournal – not that anyone really read her livejournal, but she liked to keep up with it, for posterity's sake. Just in case she ever did become rich and famous, her prospective admirers might want to see what she was like before the glitz and glamor. Or the potential glitz and glamor, anyway. Really, if those kids in _High School Musical_ could become successful, then she probably had a really decent chance to strike it big someday, somewhere. It was possible, anyway. She could dream.

Sigh. The internet was so _boring._ There really wasn't anything to do after she went through her usual routine of checking her email, checking her Facebook, checking her friend's page and then re-checking everything again, there wasn't much left to do except play endless games of FreeCell. It was a little sad to reflect upon. Here she was, eighteen years old, at home on a Friday night. She should have been...having promiscuous sex and doing lots of illegal drugs and getting drunk. That's what the television told her. But Christine had gone to Catholic school for years and as such had some residual guilt associated with that, just with little things. As a result, she always tipped 20% at restaurants, had never stolen anything, not even a cup from a coffee shop, and she was slightly convinced of the fact that she would go straight to hell if she had sex with someone before marriage. Not that she would even think of condemning someone else for doing the same, actually, she did not think anyone else in the world would go to hell for having premarital sex. Just her.

Not that Christine was the kind of girl anyone would have premarital sex with. The situation had never presented itself at all in the eighteen years that she had been on this planet, she never even had a boyfriend. Nor had she ever been on a date. It was slightly depressing, it wasn't like there was anything specifically wrong with her, it was just the way she came off to people. Christine emitted a 'little sister' vibe and no one wanted to date their little sister. At least no one this side of the Mason-Dixon line. That was why she decided that she was just going to have to become assertive when she went away to St. Mary's University in the fall. No more being relegated to little sister status, she was going to be a brand new Christine, no shrinking violet she, no way, no how. And she decided to start being assertive by finding her fellow classmates and making friends. Or, you know, Facebook friends, which were almost like acquaintances. After she got home from her ridiculously successful audition, she set about tracking down anyone who listed themselves as being a member of St. Mary's class of 2013 with a performance BFA. She'd only tracked down five people and of the five, only three had friended her back so far, one male, one female and one...well, she figured he was male. He had sent her a message back about how he had accompanied her at the audition, but she didn't really remember anything about it, just the fact that it had gone awesomely well. If it had been Liberace or a player piano in the background, she hadn't registered. But he wrote to her, so she figured it was only fitting that she write back.

_Aw, thanks! That's really nice of you, you played really well._

This was a lie – well, not a lie, but Christine really had no recollection of how well or badly he played, but she was sure he had done a fine job regardless of her faulty memory on the subject.

_I like your picture, Bach probably wishes he was that stylish when he was alive._

Aaaaand...send. She really didn't have anything else to say, she didn't know the guy at all. And just to confirm that he was, in fact, male, Christine decided to poke around this Erik-No-Last-Name-Given's profile a bit. It was a little spartan, truth be told. Just his name, date of birth and AIM screenname, as far as identification went. His 'About Me' section was largely bare, no quotes, no quizzes, he didn't even appear to be a fan of anything and that was just weird. Who made a Facebook and then didn't do anything with it? He was only in five groups and most of them seemed to be connected to St. Mary's and Memorial Repertory, except for one entitled 'Civil Marriage is a Civil Right (RI).' Huh. Well, that told her nothing about him except for the fact that he might want to marry a man someday (though his relationship section was also blank). The only things that were there in abundance were pictures, he had been tagged in over two-hundred of him.

A few photos in, Christine understood why he chose to use a picture of Bach rather than a picture of himself. From far away he looked fairly normal, really skinny and tall, but normal. When they got closer to his face though...ooh. Bad skin, when it wasn't hidden by stage makeup that was unfortunately both acne-ridden and pock-marked. He had fairly thick eyebrows and deep set eyes that might have been hot on someone with a strong jaw and dark tan, but Erik-No-Last-Name had neither. His face was long, thin and pale beneath the acne, he just looked really unhealthy, with thin, pale lips and a nose that was slightly too big for his face. Still, for someone who wasn't exactly a typical leading man, he sure looked like he got cast fairly frequently. That was sort of nice for him, she figured, since he probably didn't stand much of a chance of making it outside...high school, or where ever these production shots came from. Then again, Alan Cumming was a big movie star and Christine thought he was insanely creepy looking. Maybe Erik-Hold-The-Last-Name was still in an ugly duckling phase and he would blossom into a not so bad looking swan. There was hope anyway.

At that thought, a new message popped up at the top of her screen:

_Oh, I don't know. He wore some beautiful wigs, I am sure. Both stylish and functional. If you kept your hair short, you wouldn't have to worry about lice and it would be perfectly coiffed at all times._

Christine smiled a little at that, not really sure how she felt about talking about lice with someone she had never met. Maybe he _had_ lice and that was how he knew about it, the way his skin looked, he probably wasn't very clean – okay, that was mean. It probably would have been better if she hadn't looked at those pictures, now that she had seen how strange looking he was, she was unable to take him very seriously. Actually, she sort of felt sorry for him. Who went after a career as an actor when you looked...well, not like a movie star? Sure, the theatre world wasn't as hard on people as Hollywood, but still, it wasn't like looks counted for nothing at all. Besides, if Christine admitted to herself that all those times she had been overlooked for a role she thought she deserved stemmed from the fact that she wasn't talented enough as opposed to being not pretty enough, it would be a serious blow to her ego.

It occurred to her not to reply to him. Clearly, he was weird and probably not going to be terribly popular at school. She wanted to be a brand _new_ Christine and not saddle herself with the class loser right away. But that Catholic guilt kicked right back in and she found herself typing out a reply before she could quite stop herself:

_So, life would be better if we all wore wigs? I guess it would save time in the shower._

Call it charity, talking to him. If he tried to cling to her at school, she could just...de-friend him. It wasn't like she was going to get particularly attached to him in three months.


	8. Kids

AN: And here we have the obligatory chapter with Erik's abusive parents who prompt him to run away from home. No, I'm not kidding, that is totally what happens. Unfortunately, there's a lot of fighting in this chapter and a sad dearth of Christine and Ahmed (Ahmed is quickly becoming my favorite since he's just such a voice of reason), but I promise that next chapter will be FABULOUS. Tony Awards, baby!

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Neither does Facebook. Any musicals, plays, movies, or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_Kids!  
They a disobedient, disrespectful oafs!  
Noisy, crazy, dirty, lazy, loafers!  
While we're on the subject:  
Kids!  
You can talk and talk till your face is blue!  
Kids!  
But they still just do what they want to do!  
Why can't they be like we were,  
Perfect in every way?  
What's the matter with kids today?_

_-Bye Bye Birdie_

Madeline Theroux was a woman who played many roles in her life. One might attribute that to being uncomfortable in her own skin, but she just liked to think that she had too much personality to be contained in just one straight and narrow path. Having just purchased an adorable sun dress at JC Penny that was so totally almost vintage-looking, she decided that she would play the role of fifties housewife and make her family dinner. Of course, by 'making dinner,' she called the local Japanese restaurant and picked up various orders of sushi and noodle dishes on the way back from Memorial to take home to her weary menfolk. Well, she assumed they would be wary. Charlie hadn't slept properly in a few days and so had probably spent the majority of the afternoon napping, while Erik...well, he did whatever it was Erik spent his days doing. She really didn't ask anymore, he was a bright kid, if he was doing illegal things, then he would probably be smart enough not to get caught. The only thing she really got on his ass about was taking his medicine and he was usually good about that. She'd texted him earlier in the day to tell him to come home for dinner since they were going to have family time.

Texting was really the best way to communicate with Erik, she found. That way she wouldn't have to hear the sigh or see him roll his eyes toward the heavens when she said that they were having dinner "as a family." It sounded a little cheesy, granted, but it was _cute_. Why not go all nostalgic for an evening? Especially since her oh-so-grown-up son was going to be LEAVING her shortly. Granted, he was leaving her for off-campus housing only twenty minutes away, but he was still leaving home and that was a Big Thing. Most mothers would have been worried sick about their only babies leaving home and running off into the cold, cruel world and would be trying to get in as much quality time with their bundles of joy as possible before the big move and Maddy was no different, hence dinner. It wasn't like she was going to spend every waking hour with him, that was ridiculous, she had her own life, after all and wasn't going to drop everything just because her son was moving out for all of nine months.

Of course, even through a cell phone her son could not quite control his more...contrary tendencies, inquiring as to whether or not they were going to eat fondue and then play Monopoly in front of a roaring fire. This was part of the reason she did not want to clear her entire schedule and get some last-minute bonding in with her one and only child: she didn't like him very much sometimes. He was an utter smart ass and while that was all well and good when she could partake in bitching about someone _with _him, when Erik's tendency toward snark was directed at her, she was very much eager to send him to bed and spend a long night alone in front of the television watching _Sex and the City_ sipping a strawberry daquiri. She would then realize how pointless it was to sit home alone, call some girlfriends and go out, leaving Erik free to come wandering out of his room and do...whatever it was he did when she wasn't home. It never really occurred to Maddy to inquire about his solitary activities since she assumed that, when left to their own devices, teenage boys either did things that were morally repugnant or illegal, but since he hadn't yet managed to burn the house down, she just hadn't asked.

Then again, Charlie was home (as she had to keep reminding herself, since he usually _wasn't_ in the summer) and so Erik and he might share some male bonding...which would probably involve them popping in some sci-fi movie and then debating whether or not a lightsaber blade was correctly balanced. Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe family dinnertime wasn't such a good idea. It certainly wasn't a tradition in their house. Given her and her husband's nighttime-oriented professions, Erik either had to prepare a meal for himself or else accompany his parents to the theatre and chow down on Chinese food in the stage manager's office. Maybe not an apple pie American childhood, but it wasn't like he ever complained. What better place was there for a kid to grow up than a theatre, after all? That was always the first place he wanted to go when he got back from his little stints in the hospital, after all. She'd offer to take him anywhere when they got him in the car, her and Charlie both, the question was always the same, "Where do you want to go, Erik?" And without fail, he always wanted to go to Memorial. If the weather was nice and he was feeling up to it, they'd take him all the way up to the roof to hang out with the gargoyles and overlook the entire city (not that Providence was a very big city, but it must have looked pretty impressive to an eight-year-old). Any kid would like being in a theatre more than returning to their own home; hell, she would if she were Erik. Of course, Maddy would never want to _be_ Erik either. Not in a million years would she exchange her life with her son's. The feeling, mercifully, seemed to be mutual, so there had not been any Freaky Friday incidents in their lives.

"Erik!" she yelled up the stairs leading to the second floor of her family's home after summoning her husband the same way. "Dinner!" Of course, she anticipated his answer before his voice echoed creepily in the empty hallway to reach her on the downstairs landing.

"I'm not hungry."

Erik didn't even have to yell, his voice just _resonated_ in a way that didn't seem quite natural, but that Madeline was so used to, she didn't even feel a twinge of jealousy for his natural ability. "I don't care, you have to eat _something_, get your ass downstairs!" Turning to her husband, she cocked her head and asked him, "Did he eat anything today?" Charlie, already helping himself to a spicy tuna roll, glanced at the ceiling above his head and shrugged. Clearly he was not his brother's keeper. Or his son's. Whatever, he probably hadn't eaten anything either. "Erik!" Maddy shouted up the staircase again. "I'm not going to get nodes screaming at you. Fucking _eat_ something before I hook you up to an IV and force feed you. I know how to do it, you know that!"

There was a long pause while Erik seemed to weigh his opinions. It seemed that the conviction in his mother's tone finally persuaded him that resistance would be futile and a few seconds later, she heard a door slam, followed by deliberately loud, shuffling footsteps. Whatever, it didn't matter to her whether or not he came to dinner willingly. She was his mother, not the ringleader of his own private circus. She was in charge of making sure that he ate something and she could give two fucks about whether or not he was _happy_ about eating. Satisfied that her work was done, Maddy sat down at the table to her husband's left and treated herself to chicken stir-fry and a few Boston rolls (which this place made without mayo, thank GOD because she had sworn off mayo fifteen years ago and was still going strong).

When Erik's shuffling finally brought him into the kitchen, he took the seat on his father's other side, obviously having no intention of cozying up to his mother before he left. Seeing them side by side, it was freakishly obvious how similar they were. Both of them had the stereotypical "French" look to them (though, like most Franco-American families in Rhode Island, her husband's relatives made a stopover in Canada for a few generations before traveling south for mill work), a rather square brow with ever-furrowed dark brows. Of course, her husband also had a square jaw and high cheekbones that made him look slightly rugged, even though those who knew him were aware that there was nothing rugged about him. Erik had inherited the narrow jaw of her family, though he did have the high, prominent cheekbones that might have served him well in another life. Charlie was considered tall at 6'4, but somehow Erik had surpassed him in height which was slightly mind boggling. Weirdly, Charlie still came off like a gawky teenager when he was in a crowd of people shorter than him, having never quite gotten over his 'gosh, aren't I so tall and awkward phase.' Even though he was a stick with limbs, Erik had a weird kind of grace, elegance, almost, even though he was constantly bending to speak to people and resembled nothing so much as an overgrown cricket. Maddy liked to pat herself on the back for that, thank god she enrolled him in dance when he was but a wee Erik.

"So, what were you boys up to all day?" she asked brightly, having had a very fulfilling spa day herself and most eager to discuss _that_ as well as trying to engage either of her menfolk in bitching about how _The Fashion Show_ had nothing on _Project_ _Runway._ Erik might be game for that, Charlie usually wasn't and that was alright; she had been trying since the moment he was born to have a gay son and every little bit helped. Charlie spoke a bit about how he had been commissioned by Memorial to design the set for their upcoming production of _Radio Free Emerson_ and, really, building a giant radio studio that could be moved on and off-stage at will was going to be a bitch and a half. Then they spoke about manly things like construction and saws and working with their hands and Madeline tuned out a bit; the only thing she was worried about for that particular production was the prospect of displaying her breasts on stage. Not that she'd hadn't done so before – she'd been completely naked previously, most famously when she was in _Hair_ in college. God bless that show and she had money down on them for winning the Tony for Best Revival of a Musical. Erik thought she was out of her mind and Charlie had strongly urged her to just go with the flow and pool their money to go in big on _West Side Story_, but Maddy was sticking by her guns. _Hair_ or nothing. Both her menfolk were even more horrified when she laid down fifty dollars on the three boys who played Billy Elliot for the big win of the night. Erik hadn't spoken to her for about three days. Didn't matter. And she had absolutely no qualms about taking money from her son, who refused to bet on the three little dancing boys on principle.

And speaking of..."Oh, guys, Tony Awards party at Tim and Chester's tomorrow. Dress up, look pretty, you know the drill."

Erik rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair, "Pretty. Right. I'll dig my tiara out of storage."

God, she wanted a gay son since he was in the womb, but Maddy really could have done without the drama queen tendencies. "Oh, come now, you clean up very well. Shower. It's all anyone expects of you. Wear a bag over your head, it'll be great."

"That's what I'm doing," Charles muttered into his dinner."

Giving her son a run for his money in eyeroll superiority, Madeline said airily, "Oh, wow, okay, thank you Negative Nancies. When I said I wanted a nice family dinner, I did not mean that I wanted this to turn into some kind of therapy session for those of us with unexplainable low self esteem. Charles, you're beautiful, I don't fuck uglies. Erik...well, if you actually _went_ to therapy, you'd probably feel a lot better about yourself than you do. And if you're going to use me as your therapist, then I demand payment."

A pained look crossed Erik's face and he shook his head, "Okay, first of all, I'm going to _have_ to go to therapy to forcibly remove the image that you have just placed in my mind – I'm thinking lobotomy, will my medical insurance cover that? And second of all, you've been talking about how unfortunate looking I am since I was an infant and incapable of retaliating about your hideous 80s hair, so please do me the courtesy of shutting the fuck up."

Madeline reached across the table and gave her son a good, hearty slap on the arm. "You don't tell your mother to shut the fuck up. And I never said you were 'unfortunate looking' as a baby, you were an ugly baby and ugly babies are the best sort of babies. You have an excuse for forcing them to wear adorable tiny hats. Right, honey?" she asked, seeking the support of her husband.

"I don't know, I think ugly babies are cute, that's what I said to your mom when we visited at the hospital," Chester said, helpfully. "I mean, it's just sort of pathetic, it's like, oh, I'll love you since no one else will – and there were some UGLY babies in that place, you were in good company."

Poor Erik did not have an easy time of it, coming into this world. Three weeks ahead of schedule, Madeline's water broke and she had to be taken quickly to the hospital. The doctors had largely been concerned with difficulty the child might have with breathing, but his respiratory system had been fine and after monitoring him for a few days, Erik was permitted to come home. The only trouble they had with him was moderate jaundice, but his parents were told to just put him in sunlight for a while every day and the condition would probably clear itself up.

It was the sun that did it, unfortunately.

"It could have been worse," Erik said with a shrug, leaning back in his chair. "I could have looked like the baby from _Eraserhead."_

Maddy shuddered rather violently at that pronouncement. "Urgh, thanks. Just when I forget that movie, it comes back to haunt me. I swear, I will _never_ forgive your father for taking me to see that. I think I covered my eyes during the entire thing, it was so..._weird_. Yeah, if you looked like that, I would never have loved you, sorry kid." Fortunately, maybe being subjected to that horror fest before her own little bundle of complications was born softened the blow. It enabled Madeline to visit the NICU and look down at her own little jaundiced, noseless bundle of joy and think, _Well, it always could have been worse. _"So, anyway, Tony party tomorrow and – oh! Oh, Erik, you should invite that cute girl whose been writing on your Wall."

"Absolutely not." There was nothing more terrible to a teenager than when their parent acquired a Facebook and used it to stalk their offspring.

"Why not?" Madeline said, utterly perplexed. "She's _adorable_ and, you know, you're lucky a girl like that will talk to you, considering you seem to think you're just a spinal condition away from ringing bells at Notre Dame." Mean? Certainly. But _he_ started it.

"Right, Mother, let's get one thing absolutely clear," Erik said and his father looked up sharply from his plate, since when Erik started talking like that, it was never good. "In the first place, I don't automatically assess everyone who speaks to me and think of them as a potential fuck buddy. In the second - "

"Okay, that's enough," Charles said, stranding up and forcibly dragging Erik's chair away from the table. "Either stop being a shithead or go to bed, those are your options, take them or leave them." Most people didn't know what Maddy and Charlie saw in each other. She was dynamic and energetic – abrasive, some might say, while he was a quiet, intellectual sort. But Charles could be an absolute pitbull when he wanted to and in anything regarding his wife or child, all bets were off. Even when his wife and child decided to go head-to-head against each other and he had to pick sides.

"Fine, fuck it, I didn't want to come down anyway," Erik said with a low growl, getting away from the table and marching upstairs with an expression of utmost disgust on his face. It was fairly clear to Charlie that his son would not actually remain in his room. If he was of a mind to go searching for him in the middle of the night – which, frankly, he wasn't since it wasn't worth it – he assumed he would probably find him sleeping on the floor of Ahmed's room. So long as he wasn't crouched in a gutter, strung out and vomiting, he did not care what his son did to cope with being an obnoxious teenager.

Once the door slammed to Erik's room Madeline shook her head and said, "I don't know what his problem is – you don't think it's something we did?" When Charlie opened his mouth to reply, she held up a hand to cut him off. "Never mind. It's clearly our fault; he got the worst of both of us."


	9. Electricity

AN: So...I really didn't expect the Tony Awards Party to be as massive as it's ended up being. Here's Part One of, what I hope will only be a two-part series, though I've only got them through the opening number, so I don't know what's going to happen next. No Christine again this time (poor girl, she'll feature again soon), but we meet most of the crew from Memorial Repertory who will figure into the story later. I've had to up the rating for explicit drug use in this chapter (hey, like I said, pulling in from as many Phantom sources as I can, and we all know that Kay's Erik is an incorrigible lover of opiates...), but I think it's really very tame. Thanks for sticking with the story and please don't hesitate to review to tell me what you like/don't like about it, I'm open to suggestions! I hope this chapter is easy to follow for people who didn't see the show, but I'm sure the opening number is on YouTube or something, it was pretty spectacular. Check it out, if you haven't already!

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I in charge of the Tony Awards. Any musicals, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_It's a bit like being angry,  
It's a bit like being scared  
Confused and all mixed up and mad as hell.  
It's like when you've been crying  
And you're empty and you're full  
I don't know what it is, it's hard to tell.  
It's like that there's a music playing in your ear  
But the music is impossible, impossible to hear  
But then I feel it move me  
Like a burning deep inside.  
Something bursting me wide open impossible to hide  
And suddenly I'm flying, flying like a bird  
Like electricity, electricity._

_-Billy Elliot: The Musical_

Many medical professionals had informed Erik, upon entering his teen years, that under no circumstances was he to give in to overly indulgent consumption of alcohol. Actually, they specified that under no circumstances was he to _drink_ alcohol, otherwise the consequences to his liver and dermal structures would be severe. Punk kid though he might be, Erik really didn't want his liver falling out so he obeyed the strictures of his doctors (and his therapist) and abstained, graciously. Of course, he was a teenager – a teenager dealing with greater than usual stress levels who often found himself in the company of people he suspected of being highly functional alcoholics. Well, when everyone else around you was three sheets to the wind and dancing barefoot on coffee tables or set pieces at cast parties that you were required to attend once every few months, a guy could feel left out when he wasn't under the influence of some kind of controlled substance. Individual though he may be, nothing sucked more than being the sole sober person at a party.

Honestly, he wouldn't have been drinking all that much even if he was permitted to do so medically, since he was only eighteen years of age and not in a fabulously progressive European country with a low drinking age. Tim and Chester tended to throw pretty wild parties and while it was always hilarious to watch a forty year old man dressed in a pair of cut-offs and a poncho (they threw a Hobo Party when the economy officially went down the shitter earlier in the year) explaining to the police that, yes officer, they would keep it down, it was overkill for them to be arrested for serving alcohol to minors. So, Erik and the other kids who often frequented Tim and Chester's theme nights satisfied themselves with another kind of intoxication: they got high. Really, really high.

Freddy Richard was the first one of them to try marijuana, when they were all sophomores in high school, and he didn't have much to say about the experience. He just shrugged and said, "I don't know, nothing _happened_. Was something supposed to happen? I thought I would see colors." Ahmed rolled his eyes and quickly informed him that pot was really just a glorified muscle relaxer and if he wanted to have some kind of mystical experience, he'd be better off with LSD, only not really since that could _really_ fuck you up. That produced a few seconds of stunned silence before Ahmed explained that his dad used some hardcore drugs in the 70s (since he wasn't allowed to drink as per religious regulations, but the Qur'an said absolutely nothing about dropping acid like it was going out of style). It actually explained a lot of things about Professor Yani and they dropped the subject of Ahmed's dad's drug habits, but the issue of pot came up a few more times thereafter. Apparently, the effects of pot-smoking became more potent the longer one smoked it and so, though a variety of odd circumstances that had surprisingly little to do with peer pressure, the majority of the members of Memorial Rep's junior company became avid users, with Erik, Freddy and Ahmed at the top of the pack. Meg was probably the only person who hadn't done any sort of illicit drugs in the group of them since, as she accurate phrased it, her mother would kill her if she even inhaled deeply while the others were smoking.

This was why, on the eve of the 63rd Annual Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, Erik, Ahmed and Freddy arrived (Erik having not returned home in the interim, so how he procured a three-piece suit in his size was anyone's guess) at Chester and Tim's expansive (and expensive) East Side home, dressed to the nines and high as a trio of kites in a summer breeze. Only those who knew them intimately would be aware, of course; it wasn't like they were giggling at potted plants or staring off into space for long stretches of the time, they were just...in really, really good moods and Erik even gave his mother a kiss on the cheek when she approached him cautiously, evidently a little embarrassed about how the previous evening's dinner had gone. Of course, the three of the reeked of the herb, but Maddy was actually just relieved that Erik was guaranteed to be in a good mood for the majority of the evening. Bad parenting? Probably, but it was only pot. If he started injecting heroin into his eyeballs, then they'd sit down and have an intervention.

Of course, there wasn't much time for chatting and well-wishing or for Chester to order a strip-search to ensure the boys hadn't brought illegal crap into his home. "If the cops come, they're going to think the black guy gave it to you!" he fairly screeched the first time they had arrived at his house in such a state. "But then the Jew in you can plead total innocence!" Erik explained in what he thought was a completely logical manner. Chester wasn't entirely convinced that his dual-heritage was enough to save him from the long arm of the law, but he didn't kick them out either and so Erik and friends took it as assurance that he really didn't mind their turning his house into a coffee shop, a la Amsterdam.

It was quite a successful turn-out, nearly everyone from Memorial Rep had come, along with their kids who were mingling successfully with the adults, surprisingly, not sitting in a corner bitching to each other about how lame their parents were. Freddy immediately left Erik and Ahmed to go chat up Armand Moncharmin. They had been eyeing each other prospectively since the two of them entered puberty, but as far as everyone was aware, that was as far as the relationship had progressed. Charlotte tried her damnedest to get them to go to senior prom together at the end of the year, but that plan failed rather spectacularly and Armand still wasn't quite on speaking terms with her yet. Freddy hadn't really cared, he was definitely more flamboyant and carefree than Armand, who was by all accounts a somewhat serious boy who had trouble with PDAs and still wasn't out to his father. Nevertheless, his eyes lit up when he saw Freddy, though he steadfastly avoided looking at Charlotte as she edged around him to say hi to Erik and Ahmed.

The rules of Tony Night were fairly simple: if you wanted the viewing experience to be the bitchy gabfest it was meant to be, you hang out in the living room with everyone who was guaranteed to run at the mouth during the entirety of the broadcast. If you wanted to sit in silence and drink wine and eat cheese and generally be classy about it, you went downstairs into the rec room and watched it in silence. Erik never knew why, but most party-goers opted to watch the show without a running commentary, so the basement was full to bursting with about forty to fifty people scrambling for seats before the show, probably breaking a few fire codes. It wasn't unusual to have standing room only down there, while upstairs, the worst that happened would be that a few people would wind up sitting on the floor. Erik, being the tallest person at the house had been required to sit on the floor, regardless of seating availability, since he was about fifteen. He was in good company; Tim, Chester and Madeline had the couch, while Charlie and Ann Giry took the armchairs. Ahmed snagged a chair from the kitchen and dragged it in about five seconds before the beginning of the opening number, while Charlotte, Meg, Freddy and Armand pulled up a spot of carpet for themselves (Charlotte and Armand on opposite sides of the room, of course).

"Ooh, shitty sound," Charlie said with a grimace, the first derogatory comment to kick off the 63rd Annual Tony Awards. "I really hope this isn't a running theme for the night." On the one hand, he felt bad for the sound engineers since it must be a nightmare for the mics to cut out on _Tony Awards Night_, but seriously, they didn't check for problems beforehand? Maybe they should have spent less time trying to get Billy Elliot airborne and spent a little more time running sound checks.

And speaking of... "Okay, this is officially the gayest thing I have ever seen in my entire life," Freddy said, utterly mesmerized by the sight of three pre-pubescent boys frollicking merrily around the stage.

"Their form is impeccable," Ann said, giving Freddy a pointed look. "Pay attention."

"Why is there a chair? Is the chair significant?" Meg asked, looking around, clearly hoping for guidance. When your mother was Ann Giry, grande dame of Memorial Rep and one of the most sought-after choreographers in New England to boot, it led to feelings of gross inadequacy in her offspring. Ann should have really considered that before running off to the sperm bank.

"I think the chair is there as a calming, masculine object," Erik decided, throwing poor, confused Meg a bone. Then, of course, he decided to go off on a tangent and all bets were off. "Note the hard lines, the solid craftsmanship. It has to be there to center these young boys, otherwise the aura of their own gay combined with Elton John in the background singing his little heart out would be enough to whisk them all off on a magical, rainbow-scented cloud straight to the Castro."

Chester had been silent throughout the first two minutes of the opening number, but finally he just shook his head. "Yeah, this is ridiculously gay – what the _fuck _is that?" The Billies had just come together for some odd lifts and now one of the little guys was attached to a harness and being thrown roughly around by another dancer in some pattern that was probably supposed to be symbolic, but just looked really, really...weird. And slightly sexual.

"They fly, you didn't know they flew? Hence the need for the man-chair so this show doesn't immediately become all of Elton John's most horrifying fantasies made manifest."

Chester stared open-mouthed at the spectacle before him and shook his head again, "They cannot win. I can't...this is so stupid. So stupid. Can you imagine what sort of sick little fag must have designed this? Mary must have creamed himself every night watching this, it's just...wrong. So wrong. Give me ballet, give me tap-dancing, give me _Fosse_ for fuck's sake, but please, please god, do NOT give me a little gay boy's wet dream and cap it all off with a scene from _Peter_ _Pan._ Bitch, please. What, is Kathy Rigby going to come in and...I don't know, choke a bitch for stealing her shtick? Because she could take all those little fags. Oh yes she could."

Tim reached across and gave Chester's knee a reassuring squeeze. "It's over now, dear," he intoned in his most soothing I-work-with-insane-people-every-day-I'll-be-damned-if-I-can't-get-this-crazy-queen-to-stop-her-bitching voice. "Look, _West Side Story._"

Chester relaxed immediately, "See, now, those are some _manly_ queens."

"And _Guys and Dolls!_" Meg chirruped encouragingly, then her face fell a bit as she watched the performance. "Wow, they look so bored."

Ann nodded grimly, "I know, I saw the show when it opened – the costumes a great – but honestly, it was like the cast was asleep with their eyes open. I mean, where's the joy? They were going for something gritty, but gritty doesn't have to be _boring_. Good dancing, good sets, good costumes...no soul. And it's just not worth watching something like that."

"Maria is the whitest looking Puerto Rican girl I've ever seen," Charlotte said, from her position of the floor. "I mean, seriously, Natalie Wood looked more Hispanic than her and she was Russian."

"Poor Natalie Wood," Meg sighed raised an eyebrow, "Did Tony not get the memo to come in costume?"

"Oh, dude, he totally forgot the Tonys were tonight," Ahmed said with a knowing grin. "You know he was sleeping and then Bernardo or someone calls him and is all, 'Dude! The opening number is starting in TEN MINUTES' and he just ran over in whatever he was wearing."

A gentleman in a cowboy hat and an obscene amount of eye make up then appeared on stage. Erik's eyes bulged out of his head to a painful looking degree and Freddy voiced what everyone was thinking, "What the fuck is this crap?"

"_Rock of Ages_," Tim said grimly, taking a long drink of his white wine and looking as though he wished he grabbed something harder before he settled in on the couch. "We're not talking about it. As a matter of fact, we're going to pretend it doesn't even exist." And so everyone did, looking everywhere except at the television, as Brett Michaels and his aging, drug-abusing cronies slurred and stumbled over the boards inexpertly. They were all content to let the embarrassment to American theatre pass without comment – until Poison's lead singer walked directly into the fly that was rapidly descending over the stage. Then everyone burst into uncontrollable laughter that did not entirely abate until Stockard Channing was half-way through her number.

"That's what you get!" Erik exclaimed, jumping up from the floor and pointing somewhat wildly at the television. "That's what you fucking get, you stupid fuck for _daring_ to call yourself a musician!"

"The Theatre Gods declare: DOOM ON YOU!" Freddy shouted, hopping up and down in front of the television until Armand grabbed him by the coattails and pulled him back to the floor. "Shh, Rizzo's singing," he said seriously. Then added, a moment later, "Um...is that Tony?" Because the young man who was apparently the object of Ms Channing's affection bore a very strong resemblance to the young Jet who had almost missed the opening number.

"Don't ask me," Chester shrugged carelessly. "All you skinny white boys look the same." Then he snorted, "Look at that little gay boy trying to be sexually attracted to a girl. She's so not buying it, honey, she's worked with John Travolta."

"And she totally saw through his heterosexual smoke screen," Armand declared sagely. He long ago admitted that Stockard Channing was the only woman he could see himself marrying when he was younger and actually passionately declared his intentions to his mother when he was around eight years old. It was at that moment that Mrs Moncharmin knew that she would never have a daughter-in-law to call her own.

When _Shrek: The Musical_ came on in all its twisted, Disnified glory, everyone reacted about as well as they had to Bret Michaels' cowboy hat. "Oh my God, get off the fucking stage," Chester moaned piteously, cradling his head in his hands as Tim pet him gently on the back.

"I hate Sutton Foster," Madelines said crossly, folding her arms and glaring at the screen. "She tries so hard to be a brassy broad and, sorry honey, you don't pull that crap when you're following Stockard Channing – wow, that nose thing was phallic...are we sure this is a show for kids?"

No one replied, of course, because it is hard to respond to other people when wrapped in a cloud of righteous indignation over animated feature films taking over 42nd Street. "I think they're being presumptuous," Charlotte said, apparently equally disdainful of Sutton Foster's brassiness as Erik's mother. "I mean, seriously, Broadway's been letting its freak flag fly for a hundred years, it's not like theatre needs the Shrek seal of approval...and oh, shit what is this Les Mis crap they're pulling? If this wins anything, I am done, I am fucking – oh, yay, it's Dolly!"

And then the party was silent, except for a quick quip from Chester regarding how many sequins it was possible to fit on one dress – followed by an even quicker quip from Charlie regarding Dolly Parton's most famous assets allowing for a greater margin of sequins that could be sewn onto an average woman's powder-blue gown. Chester may have been about to reply in kind, who knew, because what ever he was going to say was abruptly halted by a shout rising from all assembled. A base, feral cry that all theatre folk make when they catch even a glimpse of the legend that grapevined on stage before them. The universal shout was so loud that the walls enclosing the living room trembled, very slightly at the force of it. Or perhaps, just perhaps, through the magic of the theatre, the very foundation of the house knew that enclosed within it was the image of a legend so great, that it only took one word to announce her:

"_**LIZA!**_"

All the indignity of _Rock of Ages_, the foolishness of _Shrek: The Musical_ vanished as everyone stared, star-struck at the improbable offspring of two of the greatest movie musical minds ever to walk the face of the earth. Freddy prospected himself on the floor before her and Erik could have sworn that Chester's eyes were wet with admiration – the man himself did a mean Liza Minnelli impression, so the awe was definitely real. No jokes were made. Even Erik managed to keep his mouth shut regarding her vocal quality (and that was saying something since it was a not very well kept secret that he _hated_ Liza's voice and thought that any comparisons between herself and Judy Garland were an insult to the very memory of Ms Francis Gumm).

The reverential silence lasted until Madeline folded her arms smugly in her chair and gazed in satisfaction at the hippies that now flooded the screen. "They're going to win. I am going to be so rich at the end of the night, you people have no idea."

"Bullshit," Tim said immediately, not at all phased by her confidence. "There's no way. _West Side Story_ has the music, the dancing, the universal appeal _and_ they actually have the Sharks singing in Spanish. Also the timeless love story. Please, _Hair_ doesn't stand a chance. Look! They're attacking the audience! No one wants to see that."

"No one wants to see _Shrek: The Musical_ either," Madeline shot back. "And they're nominated, aren't they?"

As the cast of _Hair_ dragged eager, not entirely unsuspecting audience members from their chairs to dance about awkwardly with everyone else who could possibly have been involved in the opening number (with the exception of the sound designer who was probably dying of embarrassment in the booth), everyone sat back and let out a collective breath as Freddy voiced what everyone in the room was thinking:

"That was an emotional roller coaster. I'm exhausted."

"And it's only the opening number," Armand said wearily. "There are still more acts to go."


	10. Let the Sun Shine In

AN: And end of the Tony Awards! I cut a lot of stuff out, it was reading like a Twitter. Lots of the grown-up people in this chapter, I hope they're interesting enough to hold your attention, but the kids will be coming into their own next time around! Shorter than the last few chapters have been, but this would have been insane if I did the entire ceremony. As it is, I think I captured the highlights well enough.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I in charge of the Tony Awards. Any musicals, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_We starve, look at one another, short of breath  
Walking proudly in our winter coats  
Wearing smells from laboratories  
Facing a dying nation of moving paper fantasy  
Listening for the new told lies  
With supreme visions of lonely tunes_

_-Hair_

It was actually shaping up to be one of the more entertaining awards ceremony in years, so the snark was cut down on considerably as the evening bore on. Of course, everyone still bitched and moaned and laughed at the MC's choice of dress, "How many cows did Neil Patrick Harris have to slaughter to make that suit?" It wouldn't be a party if they didn't do that, but on the whole, their comments were fairly tame and there was very little bickering when bets were won or lost, depending on how the awards were handed out. At least until one particular cast of every hippie's favorite musical got up to shove their crotches in the faces of unsuspecting audience members.

"Everybody shut the fuck up!" Madeline exclaimed suddenly, her drunken antics at Tony Parties a thing of legend in years past. This was actually an off-year for her. "_Hair _is up!"

"They're not going to win," Tim said flatly. "It's going to be _West Side Story _and you know it. I feel bad about taking your money."

"No way. No _fucking _way, _Hair_ is totally timely and well done and they get naked, they're winning," Madeline said with a slightly manic gleam in her eye. "Wanna make a bet about it."

"We already have," Tim reminded her, taking a leisurely sip of his gin and tonic (more gin than tonic at this point in the night).

"Oh, I'm not talking about money," Madeline said, shifting toward Tim, acting like some kind of feverish, drunken riverboat gambler from the turn of the century. Both Erik and Charlie turned toward her, hoping that she wouldn't be _too_ upset if they dragged her from the room to prevent her from betting the house in some kind of manic, musical-theatre induced rush. "If _Hair_ wins, we do it next year."

Raising an eyebrow elegantly, Tim said, "We do it? At Memorial? Need I remind you that it's really a show for twenty-somethings and you're on the wrong side of thirty-five?"

"You needn't," Madeline said. Though she occasionally swayed, stumbled and spilled things while intoxicated, she rarely, if ever, slurred her speech. "I don't care if there's a part for me, I don't care if you have to cast the entire thing off the streets – I don't care if you go down to RISD and grab all the hippies off their grassy knoll, I want us to do _Hair_. And if they win, we will." Extending her right hand she smiled wickedly and added, "Do we have a deal?"

Tim contemplated her outstretched hand for a long moment. "We have a deal," he said finally, reaching across Chester to give her hand a firm shake. "And if you lose..._Hello, Dolly!_"

Maddy's eyes narrowed, but she did not pull her hand away until the deal was sealed properly. It was a well-documented fact that Madeline absolutely _abhorred_ the musical and knew that it was inevitable that she would be someday cast as the title character. Really, it was just a matter of when at this point, since Tim had been threatening to put that show in the season's line-up since Madeline had turned thirty. Dropping her director and best friend's hand, she decided to draw all of the innocent bystanders into their agreement. "You're all witnesses!" Madeline shout, pointing to everyone surrounding them, who all nodded quickly, eager to get this weird conversation over with as soon as possible. Charles reached down and grabbed Erik's shoulder to pull him back and hiss in his ear, "Should we have let her do that?"

Erik shook his dad's hand off his shoulder and shrugged, "She didn't bet the house, the car or try and sell me again, like she did when _Avenue Q_ won Best Musical. I think we're okay." Erik actually did not hate _ Hello, Dolly!_ It was one of those musicals that he watched when he was home sick from school as a child and everyone looked back fondly on musicals they watched when they had a day out of school and nothing else to waste their time with. It didn't affect him adversely either way. If he was in _Hair_ he would probably just be relegated to swaying with everyone in the background and if they went the _Dolly_ route, then he would play Ambrose and not spend a lot of time on stage anyway.

It was a tense silence that greeted the announcement of Best Revival of a Musical. Tim would probably be cool as a cucumber either way, Madeline was likely to pull an Alice Ripley and flip her shit if she lost...and if she won. Then she was liable to jump around recklessly and topple chairs and human beings. Erik would rather his mother try to sell him to Chester and Tim again as a houseboy than fall on him and splash red wine in his face. When _Hair _was announced as the winner, the room was still deadly silent. Then, after the briefest half-second of shock, Madeline shrieked happily and jumped up and down in victory (indeed, sloshing red wine all over Ahmed's head, but he wisely said nothing). Tim probably summed everything up best with a single word, "Shit."

The night dragged on, the booze flowed, the sound glitches multiplied and Alice Ripley was _crazy_. In the first place, everyone in the room was absolutely horrified when she won 'Best Featured Actress in a Musical.' Madeline stood up, slightly unsteady on her feet at that point, to shriek at the television, "You SUCK! You SUCK! That is not acting! Any PMSing pre-menopausal BITCH can get up there and have a nervous breakdown on stage. I have a nervous breakdown once a WEEK, you don't see me winning any awards. YOU SUCK!" Charlie quietly let her back to her chair and handed her another glass of wine which Maddy sucked down greedily as she watched Ms Ripley get on stage and, as Ann put it, "Flip her shit."

It was rather like watching a train wreck in slow motion, or so Erik later decided. You could see, the moment that she arrived on that stage, something was..._off_. Unlike Angela Lansbury who was sweet and humble, Roger Robinson who was adorably honored and knew he absolutely deserved it, Alice Ripley, managed to be both entitled, pretentious and come off as completely batshit insane. Meg tried to be diplomatic, really, "Well, what would you do if you won a Tony? You'd probably ramble like a crazy person too and she was trying to make a point."

"It's not about making a point," Erik said, utterly exasperated. "If you want to make some kind of crazy point, you refuse to show up for the ceremony - "

"Dolly was waiting in the lobby," Armand reminded him. "She's not the type to make a political statement at the Tonys."

"Yeah, but she wasn't going to win anyway and she knew it," Erik replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. "But if you want to prove something – which you shouldn't because it's just the height of selfishness to try and make an evening meant to honor the best of Broadway all about you – you refuse to show up and have someone give the politically charged speech in your stead."

Chester snorted and looked down at the children assembled at his feet speculatively, "And if any of you little shits become famous by some miracle and get nominated for one of these things, and then sleep with the judges and win you damn well better accept it. I swear to God, I will hunt you down if you don't and shove the damn award down your throat. I hate fuckers who think they're too good for this shit."

"You must admit that it can be fairly...arbitrary. After all, this is all a matter of opinion and politics," Charlie said reasonably. That was why everyone kept him around, really, because he was always willing to talk sense if anyone was willing to listen. Most did not, but he continued speaking sensibly and hoped they would come around.

Usually, he was disappointed. "Well, yeah, and people like Geoffrey Rush know that, but you don't see him quoting JFK and generally acting like an idiot."

"No, he's just trying to convince us to see an Ionesco," Ann said. "You couldn't _pay me_ to sit through that crap."

"That's because you have no taste," Tim said mildly. He was good at that sort of thing, utterly shooting someone down while making it sound as though the two of them only suffered from a slight difference of opinion. It was what made him such an excellent director, he had people skills coming out of his ears.

The rest of the evening was downright boring after Madeline and Tim's outrageous betting and Maddy's continued lunacy over whether or not Alice Ripley should have her Tony taken away for inappropriate use of quotations in her acceptance speech. Soon the adults had settled into a drunken lull and the children, as they so often did at this stage in the night, began speaking to each other.

"I can't believe you guys had the balls to smoke before you came," Armand said, shaking his head. Armand was a very good boy and, like most good boys, lived in perpetual fear of the anger of his mother and father. He'd never had a drink, never smoked a joint, never even smoked a cigarette (though Erik loudly maintained that pot was better for you than tobacco, citing various scientific studies that he never managed to produce a hard copy of).

"I can't believe you didn't tell me," Charlotte sniffed, clearly offended, as she always was when she was left out of _anything_. She might be out of the country, but if her theatre friends were hanging out together and didn't tell her (even if they knew she wasn't available to come anyway). She always took it as being some kind of snub or insult and then refused to speak to them – and then just got more pissed off when she was left out of another event because everyone thought she was angry with them and wouldn't want to hang out if they asked.

"It's not like I sent these two written invitations," Freddy said, having lost interest with the awards ceremony entirely and settled on the floor, curled up with his head on his arms, eyes closed as though he planned on dropping off to sleep at any moment. "They just showed up at my work and told me we were driving together. It was incidental. Accidental. I forgot I had some in the glove compartment."

"Oh yeah," Meg interjected, rolling her eyes. "That's legal."

Shrugging as well as he could whilst sprawled on the floor, Freddy did not even open his eyes to look at her before replying, "I live dangerously."

In the interest of keeping the peace, Ahmed said, "Listen, Charlotte, next time we get together, we'll call you, okay? Um...well, Erik and I were going to Seneca Falls. You want to come?"

"Where the hell is Seneca Falls?" she asked, clearly not that enthused about the idea, but determined not to be left out. Probably had something to do with spending her childhood chubby and alone, but Charlotte would be damned if anyone accused her of bully-related PTSD.

"It's the town that Bedford Fallsfrom _It's A Wonderful Life_ is based on," Erik explained. "Also the birthplace of the women's lib movement. The 19th century women's lib movement, that's why we're going. They have _statues_." He said the word with something close to reverence in his tone. It was only logical. Erik was a self-proclaimed atheist, he had to have _something_ to put his faith in. Some people chose mankind to be their spiritual investment. Erik chose statues. He left it to Ahmed and Freddy to explain the relative merits of donning statues of women in men's clothing and sunglasses since his attention was now entirely consumed by a buzzing in his pocket.

Removing his phone, Erik saw that he had a text message. It read:

_r u watching? y r all the ladies showing their boobs? all the mens are gay!!! n aliceripleys so weird!_

The text messaging skills of Miss Christine Daee left much to be desired, but Erik didn't mind. He had sent her a text about twenty minutes earlier regarding the fact that the breasts of every woman in attendance were on frightening display that evening. It was a sign that you were in a room filled entirely with theatre people when a pair of healthy mammaries appearing on screen did nothing more than make all of the males assembled feel extremely uncomfortable. As it turned out, he rather liked Christine. She was entertaining in the way that one might be intrigued by a mentally impaired bunny rabbit or some other soft, fluffy, inoffensive creature. It was easy to talk to her – well, write to her, since they had never actually spoken before.

**I know. I was sure there would be some sort of wardrobe malfunction. **

Erik contemplated the softly glowing screen of his phone. Maybe it was the low-dose radiation given off by the telephone, maybe it was the weed, maybe he was just sick and tired of always doing the same things with the same people, but in that moment, Erik decided that he was going to do something bold, daring and entirely uncharacteristic for him.

**What are you doing next weekend?**

The reply was a few minutes coming, but Christine did get back to him:

_idk, do u want 2 do something?_

**A few fellow students and myself might roadtrip to Seneca Falls.**

_in new york?_

**That would be the place, yes. Do you want to come? I promise we're not kidnappers.**

(This was a blatant lie, but Erik could care less.)

_k, i'll ask my dad. sounds fun._

And he felt a little flutter of something like excitement at the prospect rise, entirely uninvited in his chest. Erik chalked it up to the ill-effects of smoking and vowed to cut back in the future.


	11. Wheels of a Dream

AN: Road trip! I don't know about any of you out there in the dark, but I LOVE road trip stories. Consequently, this fic will be full of them. Well, okay, maybe not FULL of them, but there will be road trips and mini-adventures as they try and muddle through their freshman year of college. I'm kind of disgusted that I've written so much and they haven't had a single class yet, I hadn't intended to write about the entire summer, but this story is going to have so many characters who all interact with each other so much that I felt I couldn't NOT write chapters like these.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook or any Apple products. Any musicals, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

Beyond that road,  
Beyond this lifetime  
That car full of hope  
Will always gleam!

_-Ragtime_

Christine checked over the duffel bag and backpack that Erik told her she would be permitted to take along on the trip. No, seriously, he said that, literally, "You will be permitted one duffel bag and one backpack. No hard suitcases, no sleeping bags." Like she was going to a weirdly restricted camp for three days of her life. In accordance with the rules she had been given, Christine packed lightly and decided to ultimately leave her laptop at home since she didn't want to take the risk of losing it, breaking it or having it stolen while they were...camping? She still wasn't quite sure what this trip entailed, but she was excited to make new friends and oddly eager to meet Erik.

Unlike her original assessment, he wasn't some poor loser. Actually, he was a little...intimidating. In that he was really smart and Christine – okay, she wasn't _dumb_, but she wasn't as smart as Erik. Still, he was actually a pretty decent guy and they had only ever spoken on the phone or by text or through AIM, so she hadn't had to deal with the fact that he really wasn't the hottest guy ever. Maybe it would be awkward when they actually met, but Christine wasn't really concerned about Erik anymore. No, what she was a little worried about were all of the other kids who were coming. By "all" she really meant four, but it might have been four hundred for all she cared. Making friends was cool, but meeting new people was not a fun experience in and of itself. Mostly she got nervous and quiet or else giggly and she stuttered a lot and made a fool of herself. Erik insisted that everyone else coming was very cool - well, she was sure that was what he _meant_, anyway since what he said was, "No one coming is worth impressing." So that meant they were cool, or laid back or something. They had all accepted her Facebook friendship and Christine had spent the evening previous studying their profiles, like a complete creeper.

Ahmed was someone Erik talked about a lot and so Christine assumed that meant that he was Erik's best friend, even though he never said as much. Whenever he referenced Ahmed he always said, "This guy I know," or, "That kid, Ahmed," or, "That Persian kid," usually with a note of mild exasperation in his voice, but Christine still clung to her notion that the two of them were BFFs. Ahmed was a total cutie, she freely admitted that to herself as she looked over his pictures on Facebook. He had dark green eyes and thick black hair and really clear dark skin which Christine envied. Actually, most of the guys she knew had good skin and she couldn't understand why that was. The other boy who was coming, Freddy, had lots of freckles, but he was just cute as a button. A really attractive button around her own age. A button with a nice butt. His hair was curly, strawberry blonde and he had the clearest blue eyes Christine had ever seen – she _loved_ blue eyes on a guy. Like, obsessively. Heck, she sat through every _Lord of the Rings_ movie just to look at Elijah Wood's baby blues. Unfortunately, Freddy was out and proud so she knew that she had no chance. Um. Not that she was looking for a relationship or anything with a guy she had never met, but it was good to know that there wasn't even the remotest hope of that happening if she was so inclined. It created a safety net, of sorts.

And then there were the two girls coming along, which made her more nervous than considering what boys that she may or may not theoretically want to date might think of her. For some reason, girls (theatre girls especially) made her really nervous. It was probably the force of competition that weighed heavily on young women in the theatre and the fact that these girls were going to be people she had to compete with for roles made her even more nervous than usual. She actually had briefly spoken with Meg in Facebook chat before and she seemed nice. She was a very pretty, pixie-looking little girl with big dark eyes and curly black hair, basically Christine's mirror opposite. Apparently she was a dancer and had the long, willowy frame classically associated with ballerinas (though, from looking at her in group shots, it was apparent that Meg was really vertically challenged). The other young lady she would be traveling with was named Charlotte and she was also really pretty. Her build was heavier than Christine's, but that really only meant that she had a round face and female attributes that Miss Daee could only attain by undergoing major surgery. It had taken Charlotte a few weeks to accept Christine's internet friendship and they had never actually contacted one another beyond that. It made her feel a little twitchy, though if it wasn't for the fact that the two girls were going, her dad probably would have gently informed her that he didn't feel comfortable letting her spend the weekend with three strange boys.

Truth be told, Christine was more nervous than excited about it - anxious was probably a good descriptor, actually - and she still wasn't sure why she had agreed to go in the first place. It wasn't like they were all buds; she still hadn't seen or talked to Erik in the flesh and he was the one she was best acquainted with. When she accepted, she had idle fantasies of making life-long friends and memories and everything played out very much like a John Hughes movie in her mind. But the reality would probably consist largely of awkward silences and her trying really hard not to be annoying or too friendly or familiar with these people she didn't know at all. It was daunting. And Christine really wished that her dad hadn't been so uncharacteristically lenient and basically said, "Oh, well, if you want to, have fun!" He wasn't even going to be home to see her off, having been called in for some kind of emergency string rehearsal at an ungodly hour that morning.

So Christine took a very deep, bracing breath when her phone buzzed and Erik's name flashed across the screen. "H-hello," she said, hoping that her voice didn't squeak too nervously (or, if it did, that it wasn't noticeable over the phone).

"Hi, Christine," Erik said, sounding composed and bored and adult in a way Christine was sure she would never be able to master. "We're outside. The VW bus, you can't miss it."

Indeed, it was _really_ hard to miss the mustard yellow monstrosity that was awkwardly parked in front of her house, it's bulk swallowing half the street. Thoughts zipped through her head about gas mileage and fuel emissions, but if she was going to pick a day to become an environmentalist, today would not be that day. It was his friend Ahmed's dad's car that they were borrowing for the trip. "He used to be a hippie," Erik told her when she inquired about their mode of travel and sleeping accommodations. Apparently they would be sleeping _inside_ the bus and that kind of scared her, frankly, since it sounded like the beginning of every after school special about rape that she had ever seen. All she could do to console herself was to continually consisder the fact that these were going to be her classmates and none of them seemed to have a criminal record and hadn't she made a vow to try to live a little as she embarked on her college career? Yes, she had. So she would sleep in a bus with five people she didn't know and she would like it.

After telling Erik she would be right down, Christine gave her room one last quick glance around before picking up her things and running out the door, checking the lock twice before embarking on what promised to be a very interesting weekend. When she turned around to face the car, Christine saw that Erik was standing against it, apparently there in case another mysterious bus decided to park on the street in front of her house. It made sense, he was distinctive enough to help her distinguish between two identical cars. And _wow_ was he _tall. _Christine had know that intellectually, but he was _so_ tall and she was _so_ short and only wearing flip-flops, she didn't even have shoes with any kind of lift in them to make her feel slightly better about herself in comparison. Actually, he did look a little bit better in person than he did in pictures (or maybe the distance from his face to her eyes made her kinder). His skin wasn't anything to write home about, but it was a little clearer than the Facebook close-ups led her to believe and though he was startlingly thin, there was something about the way his bangs fell over his face and the kind of cocky set of his mouth sort of...call it charisma, but Christine wasn't overcome with the initial swell of pity she had for this poor kid who thought he could succeed in theatre.

"Let me take your bag," he said, extending a long-fingered hand and already placing his fingers around the strap of her duffel bag and Christine denied forty-plus years of feminist advancement and just kind of let him do it because, oh yeah, there was that _voice_. Erik had a _great_ voice. It was like Jeremy Irons and Alan Rickman got together and just made some kind of vocal love child and stuck that in the body of this gangly, awkward-looking eighteen year old boy. Christine was absolutely _stunned_ the first time she heard him on the phone and actually asked who was calling twice since she was convinced it had to be one of her dad's friends from the theatre, since she'd just never heard a kid her age with a voice like that. It was only more impressive in person and for a second all she could do was just kind of gape at him and follow him like a weird puppy around to the back of the van...where she suddenly got an eyeful of cardboard boxes of various sizes, over which her duffel bag was tossed, generating a yelp of pain from beyond the boxes. Immediately Freddy's bright blue eyes and pale red curls peeped up over the top of the boxes.

"I was _trying _to _sleep_," he said angrily, not sparing a glance for Christine as he glared daggers at Erik who apparently couldn't care less that he had interrupted his friend mid-nap.

"You should have chosen a less dangerous place to sleep. Your own fault," Erik said, shrugging carelessly. "Come on, Christine, you can chose where you want to sit around this side." Christine hesitated for a beat before following Erik, not sure whether or not she should apologize since it was her bag that proved to be the projectile that had roused Freddy – could she call him Freddy? That was the name he went by on Facebook, but she wasn't sure if it was a friend thing or what. So she just sort of bit her lip and glanced between the two of them worriedly before walking around to the other side of the van and being confronted with a number of turned heads and curious eyes. Erik's attitude about the whole thing really wasn't working out for her when he just pointed at people and rattled off a series of names, "Ahmed is driving, Charlotte is listening to her iPod and ignoring all of us until we stop for lunch, talk to Meg, she won't shut up, I ride shotgun and Freddy is sleeping in the back. Any questions?"

For a long second Christine just glanced from the people in the car, to Erik, back to the people in the car before breaking out into a wide, nervous smile which Meg matched, though her smile was more enthusiastic and less frightened. "Hi, Christine!" she chirruped brightly, moving over a bit and patting the space on the seat beside her. "It's so cool to meet you, you can sit with me, I'll buffer you from Charlotte, she's angry when she doesn't get nine hours of sleep." Christine glanced at the redhead on Meg's right and wasn't even sure if she was awake, honestly. Her headphones were in and she was wearing a pair of absolutely massive sunglasses that completely obscured her eyes. Her head was leaning back against the seat and the way her mouth was slightly open implied that she actually was having an easier time of sleeping than Freddy.

Clambering into the car, Christine was eager to take Meg up on her offer since she seemed to be the friendliest person in the vehicle. Ahmed waved briefly, but was drumming his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel, evidently eager to be on the highway again. As she climbed into the car she did a bit of a double-take; where there would have been a third row of seats, there was not, just a mattress on the floor and those inexplicable cardboard boxes. Meg caught where she was looking and smiled at Christine knowingly. "I know, isn't it totally creepy? I told Ahmed he better not speed because the police would seriously think that we're up to something sketchy, like drug dealing or...white slavery or something totally not cool." At Christine's vaguely alarmed expression, she added, "Oh, but we're not though."

Ahmed snorted from the front seat, "Oh yeah, Meg. That's really comforting...is this a cul-de-sac, Christine, or do I have to pull into someone's driveway to turn around?"

"Um...driveway," Christine said faintly, glancing between Freddy curled up on the mattress with a pillow over his head and Ahmed's green eyes reflected in the rearview mirror. Meg was now looking at Christine with a concerned expression on her face.

"Did I freak you out? Oh God, I totally freaked you out, didn't I? I am _so_ sorry, I was just kidding and you should know that I kid a lot and we're really not druggies and rapists and anything...okay, well, the guys are kind of druggies, but not in a _bad_ way, they're just kind of...potheads. Um. Whoops. I mean -"

"Wow, nice, Meg," Freddy said from the back of the bus. "Just tell her all of our neuroses and every illegal activity we've engaged in – imaginary or not. If you didn't scare her before, you really have now."

"Oh no," Christine said sincerely, finding her voice for the first time in five minutes. "I mean...there's worse things people can do than...um...run a prostitution ring out of the back of the _Little Miss Sunshine_ bus, right?"

Meg giggled appreciatively, but Ahmed groaned from the front seat. "We've had this bus – my _dad_ has had this bus since he was in high school. We weren't on trend for as long as I was alive and then Abigail Breslin has to go and make the bus popular. My dad is seriously considering painting it."

"That...makes sense," Christine said slowly, since she thought it most definitely did _not_, but was too shy to say so. "Um...so what _are_ all the boxes for? If not...um. White slavery."

"AA," everyone in the car (with the exception of the peacefully snoozing Charlotte) said in slightly eerie unison.

"What's AA?" Christine asked, eyeing the cardboard box warily.

"Male bonding, without intoxication or jock itch," Freddy readily supplied. Then added, with a small frown and speculative glance at the boxes, "Do we have wigs?"

"Of course we have wigs," Erik confirmed slightly haughtily, as though Freddy was a fool for even suggesting that they might not. "What do you take us for? Barbarians?"

"But what do you...do?" The hesitation in her tone meant that she really didn't want to know, but the question was already out of her mouth and thus the damage was done. Besides, if she was going to be a participant on this AA thing, she thought she had a right to know whether or not it was actually some kind of clandestine drug cartel or rum running operation. Christine had long ago made the decision to give into all kinds of peer pressure to make friends, this was going to be no different.

"We dress up statues in people-clothes," Ahmed explained, sparing just a moment to glance at Christine as he backed inexpertly onto the sidewalk as he attempted to turn the car around on her slightly narrow street. "It's awesome," he clarified, just in case there was any doubt in the new girl's mind as to whether or not that was the case.

Apparently there was room for doubt. "You...really?" Christine asked, her eyes locked firmly on Erik's back as he fiddled with the radio. Since Erik was the only person in the car that she could claim a tentative friendship with, he seemed like the one person she could trust to give her a straightforward answer. He did not disappoint

"Everyone needs a hobby," Erik said, shrugging slightly before settling on listening to NPR, seemingly the only station that came in clearly in Herbert the Love Bug (because the car was too diesel to be called 'Herbie').

"Oh, well, that's legal, isn't it?" Christine said, now beginning to relax since, really, if dressing statues up was some kind of smokescreen for illegal activities it was a really bizarre smokescreen.

"Eh, in most places it isn't illegal," Erik said, turning around in his seat to look directly at her. "I mean, some people like to invoke fake 'no trespassing' rules, but -"

"But if they try to stop us, I just say that they're sexually assaulting me," Freddy finished, apparently deciding that naptime was definitely over. "It's easier if there are girls along though, security officers are way less likely to try to grab you guys – um, Erik, you did tell her what she was getting into, didn't you?"

Another shrug of his bony shoulders. "I may have been reticent on a few of the finer details. Don't worry, Christine, we won't ask you to climb any fences. You and Meg can act as look-outs. I tend to do all of the questionably legal things."

"He lives on the wild side," Meg explained.

"Also, he's the fastest runner," Freddy added, giving Christine an appraising look now that he was upright and fully conscious. "So, what do you do for fun?"

It was a bit of a whirlwind and Christine wasn't sure what she felt about these kids, but she was smiling and just a little bit relieved that they hadn't started off for the Mass Turnpike in total silence. It was probably better to have weird, awkward conversations about sex and drugs than no conversation at all, right? Relaxing for the first time since Erik more or less grabbed her bag out of her hands, Christine sat back against the seat, smiled at Freddy and replied, "Like you guys were saying: prostitution and drug dealing. The usual."


	12. Rock Island

AN: Roadtrip disaster! This is based on an experience I had while getting lost in New York State, though the ending was much less exciting than what awaits Erik and Company on their way to Seneca Falls. Hey, it's about the journey, not the destination, right? Anyway, in this chapter, Charlotte is a bit defensive, Christine is sweet and clueless, Freddy holds out on Erik, Erik is weirdly angry, Ahmed is exasperated and Meg...well, Meg is afraid of Republicans. Enjoy! (And do drop me a review, if you either like, love, hate or think this story is getting boring).

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook (and no offense meant to anyone out there who has had a good experience while in Schroon, New York). Any musicals, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_I don't know how he does it,_

_But he lives like a king and he dallies  
And he gathers and he plucks and shines_

_And when the man dances, certainly boys, what else?_

_The piper pays him!_

_Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir, yes sir._

_When the man dances, certainly boys, what else?_

_The piper pays him! Yessssir, yessssir.  
But he doesn't know the territory!_

_-The Music Man_

After the initial getting-to-know-you conversation, the ride to upstate New York was quite mellow – well, mellow considering the fact that they were not actually members of a Columbian drug cartel, nor did they deal in the buying and selling of human beings. Charlotte eventually woke and began peppering Christine with questions about herself, her school, her interests, roles that she had played, etc. Christine was slightly flattered by the attention and eagerly chatted on with the redhead, assuming the other girl was just being friendly. While it was true that Charlotte was a naturally talkative person, her questions toward Christine had just as much of an 'assessing a potential threat' motivation as they did a 'getting to know you' motivation. Charlotte was shrewed like that and Erik was wise to her motives.

"Okay, Charlotte, lay off the Spanish Inquisition," he said into the rear-view mirror (having taken over driving from a sleepy Ahmed who was napping with his mouth unflatteringly open in the passenger's seat).

Charlotte was appropriately irritated by the racial slur. "I was just _wondering_," she said defensively, flipping her unruly hair out of her eyes with great irritation. "I mean, come on, what's wrong with a little chatting? Do you feel like a ghettoized Jew, Christine?"

A little shocked at someone likening what she had taken to be Charlotte's friendly inquiries to torture, capital punishment and forced conversion, she was silent for a moment and could just gape for a second before saying, "It's okay. I mean – no, I don't feel like...I'm in a ghetto. Or whatever – not whatever! It was traumatic and all I'm sure...for the Jews. The Jewish people. Um. Chosen Ones of God. So...it's fine. I'm fine. Not ghettoized here, entrenched firmly in the suburbs. Ah. The suburbs of conversation."

Grinning at Christine as though she had just spouted out something poetic and profound. "See?" she asked, settling back smugly into her seat. "It's okay. And I am not Queen Isabella."

"She was a psycho!" piped up an eager voice from the cargo hold.

"Yes, psycho, thank you for that brilliant assessment, Freddy, what _would_ we do without you?" Erik asked sarcastically

Affronted, Freddy popped his head up over the back seat and settled his chin down between Meg and Christine's shoulders. "What bug crawled up your butt this morning, Negative Nancy? You've been nothing but a bitch since we left Massachusetts. If I were Christine I would _so_ rather talk to Charlotte than to you, and isn't that just a little bit sad?"

Charlotte wasn't entirely sure whether it was she who was supposed to be insulted or Erik, so she settled for keeping her expression neutral, though she did fold her arms just to communicate an aura of overall disdain. "He's just antsy," Meg said decisively, taking in Erik's stiff shoulders and white knuckles on the steering wheel. "He doesn't nap, that's what happens when you don't nap."

Erik rolled his eyes, "I just hate being in a car for eight thousand hours."

"Wow, then it was totally awesome for you to suggest going on a road trip to a place that's eight hours from Little Rhody," Freddy said, totally unimpressed with that explanation. "But yeah, this trip is a little lame...um...I have fireworks, if you - "

Even though they were in the middle of what had to be a highway (even though there were no cars around them and only endless farmland to either side), Erik decided that he had to pull the car to a dead stop. This jostled Ahmed into consciousness as his limp body was thrown forward and nearly strangled by his seatbelt. "What the fuck?!" he exclaimed, adjusting the strap so that it was digging slightly less into his neck.

Slowly – oh, so slowly – Erik turned around in his seat. If looks could kill, Freddy would have been consumed by fire from the inside out. "You," he began, his voice deadly and low. Christine squirmed slightly in her seat, feeling like she was in the line of fire since Freddy was right next to her. "You have _explosives._ Explosives. Gunpowder. _And_ _you didn't tell me?_" Clearly their friendship did not mean as much to the fair-haired boy as it did to Erik.

"Um..." Freddy said, obviously attempting to salvage the relationship in whatever way he could. "Surprise? Happy birthday?"

"My birthday was in May," Erik said, clearly not assuaged in the least.

Ahmed interrupted the argument with raised eyebrows and a look of mild alarm on his face. "Are fireworks illegal in this state? I don't want to get pulled over and have them look in the back. And seriously, Erik, if we're going to just _sit_ here, pull the fuck over, we'll get pulled over if you don't."

"Ha, irony," Charlotte muttered under her breath.

Slowly, still glaring at Freddy in the mirror, Erik inched the car over into the breakdown lane. "We have to set them off. _Now_."

Sighing deeply, it was clear from the expression on his face that this was _not_ how Ahmed wanted to spend his nap time. "Okay, no, not _now_, we'll freak out the cows. You don't want to freak out the cows. It's animal cruelty. So we'll hold off on the gunpowder until later. After AA. You know, we can even wait 'til we're home, we'll go to the beach it'll be great."

But Erik had that steely glint in his eye that meant there would be no compromising on this point. The cows were the only thing that were keeping him from grabbing the goodies in the trunk and running into the hills to cause minor mayhem. It wouldn't do to upset the local livestock. "Fine," he said testily. "But the first opportunity we have, I am setting those suckers off."

Opportunity came in the form of the small, holiday town Schroon Lake, once home to the production of a Hollywood movie starring some of their favorite dead actors. Of course, no one knew that at the time. They only knew that they were hopelessly lost.

One wrong turn. One wrong exit. And they wound up two hours out of their way from Albany, in some creepy little _Friday the 13__th_ style town where the locals all had Midwestern accent and called Erik "boy" which he had not appreciated in the slightest when they pulled into a gas station to ask for directions.

Of course, in revenge for being creepy and in-bred, Erik decided that they would leave their mark upon Schroon Lake before exiting – _this_ was the place to set off nearly one-hundred dollars worth of fireworks. Charlotte and Meg stayed behind in the car – Charlotte because she wanted to drive the get-away vehicle (and be the first to tell the police that she had nothing to do with this when they were all inevitably carted off to hick jail) and Meg because Schroon Lake scared the crap out of her and she was utterly convinced that if she left the safety of the van, she would be tortured by cannibals while "Dueling Banjos" played in the background. This left Erik, Ahmed, Freddy and Christine to go off and wreck the aforementioned havoc that Erik was determined to cause to enliven the afternoon.

After they wandered around for about ten minutes looking for "the perfect spot" - Freddy mumbling that Erik was like a puppy with a full bladder – Christine was beginning to think that she should have remained in the van with the other two girls. Really, she just wanted to look at fireworks and didn't realize that it was going to be this big production (since they still weren't sure how legal they were in Schroon Lake). She had been assigned secondary look-out detail, since Ahmed was the number one look-out. Erik was, of course, going to be doing the setting and lighting of their minor explosive devices and Freddy was going to be taping it all for the sake of history and Facebook video uploads.

They wound up in some kind of rock-strewn clearing on the side of an enormous lake (the lake the town got its name from? Perhaps, no one wanted to ask a local and find out). Ahmed was thrilled with the location, if they set them off behind a boulder, no one would know, they would have plenty of time to run and plenty of places to hide if someone called the sheriff. Surely someone _would_ call the sheriff, it wasn't like they had a police department there. A sheriff and a shotgun. Gulp.

Of course, Erik had slightly more grand ideas about relieving his stress than Ahmed had entertained when his friend stopped, looked around and said, "This is it." No, Erik could not be content with just quietly making things go boom. Rather than setting the fireworks off _behind_ the rocks, he decided it would be much more dramatic (consequently, much more dangerous) to set them off on _top _of the rocks.

Oh yeah. Bad idea. And another equally bad idea was to have a police look-out. They really ought to have assigned one of them as an Erik look-out. Often Erik grumbled about the fact that people either treated him with kid-gloves or else left him to his own devices. Just pick a technique, he complained, and he would live with it. It did not seem unreasonable that Erik should be left on his own much of the time. After all, he was a bright kid, a self-described genius and things had a way of working out for him when he could not devise a way to make them work out for himself. This was not one of those times. While Ahmed had been looking to the east and Christine looking to the west for signs of law enforcement authority, Freddy had been looking at the camera, trying to find the zoom function and Erik...well, he had not been looking at _all_.

Not wanting to shout and alarm the locals, Erik was silent as he lost his footing and tripped over an unseen indentation in the rock. The sound of his body hitting the ground, as well as the box of fireworks falling atop him was the only indication Ahmed and Christine had that something was amiss.

Immediately, the two ran to Erik's side. The tall, gangly boy was lying on the ground, just a splay of limbs on his back. His thin chest was moving up and down, but his eyes were closed and aside from breathing, he wasn't moving at all. Understandably, Christine began to panic, very slightly."Is...is he going to be okay," she asked, her voice slightly high-pitched from anxiety as she wrung her hands nervously in the pockets of her sweatshirt, afraid to actually touch Erik. Oh _God, _she should never have left the car, should never have gone on this _trip,_ what was she _thinking? _Online, Erik just seemed like a nice, slightly bitter guy, she didn't know that he had a penchant for death-defying stunts coupled with a love for gunpowder. How was she supposed to know? And now he had knocked himself out and he might be seriously hurt and they probably didn't even have doctors in this part of the state, just...voodoo or whatever backwoods magic that people who lived in random, rural small towns two hours outside of Albany practiced.

"Uh, yeah, sure," Ahmed said distractedly since he was an _actor_, dammit, not a doctor and he had no fucking clue. But the fluttering of Erik's eyelashes gave him some clue that he wasn't just going to lie there unconscious for days on end, so that was probably a positive development, right? When those odd hazel eyes flickered open again, Ahmed gave Erik a nervous, crooked smile and stammered, "H-hey, man, you okay?"

Erik's gaze slid from Ahmed to Christine, whose hand he reached out and seized rather impetuously. The blonde girl looked slightly surprised, but took Erik's hand in her as he began to speak in somewhat high-pitched raptures. "Oh, Toto!" he exclaimed, giving Christine's hand a squeeze. Then he directed his gaze to Ahmed, "Auntie Em! Oh, it was so strange, there were elaborately costumed midgets and I just kept saying that I wanted to go home and now I am! Oh Auntie Em, there's no place like home!"

Ahmed's mouth was set in a grim line. "Yeah, he's fine," he said shortly to Christine, rising and brushing dirt from his jeans compulsively. "Come on, Dorothy, get up and grab the fireworks, I'll see you back at the car."

"What happened?" Freddy asked, jogging over, not having heard the crash when he wandered off to frame his shot. "Are we going somewhere else? What about the fireworks? I thought we were going to revenge ourselves on the ignorant...hill people or whatever Erik called them. I thought we were going to light fires and claim to be their new gods and demand worship and libations."

"The dream died," Ahmed said, his voice still slightly strained even though Erik had hopped up from the ground like an eager bunny rabbit on speed and was helping Christine put the fireworks back in their box. "_God_ over there tripped, so we're putting him back into the car just in case his thick immortal skull isn't immune to a concussion."


	13. My Eyes Are Fully Open

AN: And the conclusion to a wild evening in Schroon Lake. Herein all your questions should be answered...or some of them. Is Erik concussed? No! Is Ahmed a worrywart? Yes! Is Christine out of her element? Yes! Do Charlotte and Meg make a significant contribution? No!

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_If I had been so lucky as to have a steady brother  
Who could talk to me as we are talking now to one another –  
Who could give me good advice when he discovered I was erring  
(Which is just the very favour which on you I am conferring),  
My existence would have made a rather interesting idyll,  
And I might have lived and died a very decent indiwiddle.  
This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter  
Isn't generally heard, and if it is it doesn't matter!_

_-Ruddigore_

It was a long, largely silent march back to the car. Freddy and Christine tried to strike up a conversation amongst the small group, but just wound up talking to each other since Ahmed seemed determined to keep his mouth shut all the way to Seneca Falls. His dark green eyes were narrowed under furrowed black brows as he led the pack back to the car, taking long fast strides. Erik's longer legs enabled him to keep time with Ahmed easily, but he wasn't talking either, just sending his friend side-long looks. With his head cocked to the side he looked rather like a kicked puppy, but Ahmed didn't so much as glance at him until he got back in the car and had to unlock the passenger side door to let him in.

"_What happened?_" Meg mouthed to Christine. The blonde girl just bit her lip and shrugged, shooting a worried look between the boys in the front seats. Meg's dark brown eyes followed Christine's and she instantly understood from the tense set of Ahmed's shoulders and the way that Erik's head was hanging that the two of them were 'in a fight' and it was better not to talk to either of them until their little tiff was over. Being that Charlotte was used to Erik and Ahmed acting like a bitchy married couple 24/7, she looked up from the YA novel she was reading (_I Love You Beth Cooper_ – no, she was _not _reading it because of the new movie, she hated Hayden Panettiere) and then immediately went back to reading. There was absolutely no point in trying to interfere, she knew. The boys would stew in their own angry juices for a while, talk it out, then kiss and make up. They always did.

When Ahmed decided that they were going to find the nearest Sonic and then park overnight somewhere before they continued on upstate, no one argued with him. Erik didn't say anything certainly, just pulled out his iPod and slumped in the front seat, knees squashed up against the glove compartment. When Ahmed ordered _for_ him (a Jr. Burger and chocolate shake) it only took one glare from the driver's seat to get Erik to eat what he was given and not complain. And when Ahmed pulled into some sketchy trailer park-like establishment where they paid twenty dollars to pull up alongside some enormous RV s that dwarfed the little hippie-mobile, no one complained then either. Honestly, at that point, everyone was too exhausted to complain and they just dropped off as soon as sleeping arrangements were worked out. Well, almost anyone.

Being that Erik's sleep schedule was completely fucked up, he was still wide awake when all of his traveling companions were dreaming of sugarplums dancing in their heads. Or whatever they dreamed of. Freddy, Meg and Charlotte had all crammed on the mattress in the back, while Christine slept curled up on the middle row of seating. It was decided that she could get to sleep solo out of courtesy, no one really wanted to flop all over people they had never met when trying to get a restful night of sleep for morning adventures. Also they didn't know whether or not she snored or drooled or did other unsavory things while she slept and at this juncture they definitely didn't want to know. Ahmed had reclined the driver's seat all the way back and was snoozing away in a semi-reclined position (though his brows had not yet unknit themselves from the furrow they adopted when Erik fell off the rock). Erik was still in the passenger seat and wished that he was asleep, but that just was not happening. Being the type to plan ahead for such eventualities, he had brought a book and a reading light, but long ago gave up on trying to read since the words kept swimming before his tired, dry eyes. He _should_ be asleep, he was tired enough from waking up early, but his body was absolutely convinced that he should stay awake for another hour or two. Sighing lightly, Erik rolled over on his side and just stared into space. The fact that it was the space where Ahmed's face was resting just happened to be a coincidence.

"You know, watching someone sleep is insanely creepy."

_Damn_. He had been just about to doze off too. Blinking a bit, it took Erik a moment to re-orient himself to the world and he was slightly surprised to register that Ahmed, of all the narcoleptics in the world, was looking at him with sleepy, squinted eyes. "And it's also insanely creepy to be completely coherent at two in the morning," Erik shot back, squirming a little in the seat since his left arm had gone to sleep, having been lain on for so long.

"Not as creepy as using the word 'coherent' at two am," was the maddeningly sedate reply. After not having spoken for almost six hours at this point, one might have expected the two of them to tread more lightly, but that simply was not how the relationship worked.

Erik rolled his eyes and almost buried his face in his pillow before thinking better of it; no sense in squishing the nose, this one was the nice one. "Fuck you," was really all he could manage as a comeback. Still, swearing at Ahmed was a much better way to converse than actually using civilized speech...unfortunately, that didn't seem like it was going to be an option when Ahmed displayed his unwillingness to drop the subject.

"Really, though, are you okay? Not having double vision or vomiting or...stuff?"

Being unable to hide his face as he wanted to, Erik was forced to look as Ahmed used that slow, understanding tone of his, coupled with giving him a look under those long, black lashes, all innocence and sincerity that meant he wanted to _talk_. Not gossip, shoot the shit or just insult each other, which were how most of their conversations played out, he wanted to _talk_. About feelings and injuries and 'Oh, are you _sure_ you're feeling okay?' Bastard. It was totally unnecessary.

Because Erik was _fine_, just _fine_, thank you and he didn't need some kind of crack therapist best friend bitching him out over whether or not he was going to go into some kind of depressive state in the next ten minutes. Who asked Ahmed to be his goddamned babysitter anyway, had his mother put him up to this? God, Maddy, he wasn't so desperate to have a social calendar that he needed her to pay people off to hang out with him. Erik got along very well with old people and little kids he could just spend all his time volunteering at nursing home nursery schools, there must be one in the country somewhere and Ahmed wouldn't go, he didn't like tapioca pudding and that was what the aged and infirm and those lacking sophisticated palates ate. It would be on the lunch menu every day at this dual haven for the helpless and Erik would serve it and smile at the dying and...

Okay. Maybe he was being slightly off the wall. But not worryingly so. There was a difference between being wacky and being insane and Erik knew that difference well. Mostly because he _was_ himself and Ahmed only hung around himself, so he would know if he, himself, was slipping far more accurately than his well-intentioned friend could.

"I'm _fine_, I told you," Erik said, unable to keep the slight edge of irritation from his voice. "I won't be fine if you keep bothering me, like Saint fucking Monica, so just chill out and go to bed."

"I don't want to wake up in the morning and have you be dead," he replied with far too much sincerity for Erik to be comfortable with it. In the dim light afforded them by the full moon, Ahmed squinted over at Erik's pale brow and frowned as his eyes took in the sight of a bruise that had formed very quickly near his temple.

"I'm _fine_," Erik insisted somewhat scornfully as Ahmed attempted to press his half-melted slushie to his forehead. "_Fine_. I wasn't even unconscious, just...stunned, momentarily, so please stop motherhening. God, you're a hypochondriac by proxy, do you know that?"

The frown remained which sucked, since Erik had kind of been going for the opposite reaction. "Okay, listen dude, you've been a total spazz for the last few weeks. I don't know if it's stress or school or your mom or _what_, but falling off of rocks and smacking your head doesn't make me less worried. 'Cause I worry about you since you don't worry about yourself. And seriously, you need to chill. Especially if you want that girl Christine to like you."

Rolling over and looking in the back seat where Christine was still sleeping peacefully, Erik glared at Ahmed, "She already likes me. She's here, isn't she? Of her own free will. It's not like I _forced _her to come. Showed up on a white horse and...kidnapped her or something."

Ahmed raised an eyebrow which was better than frowning, but still not quite a smile. "White horse? What does that have to do with kidnapping?"

Shrugging, Erik explained, "I figure it'd look less sketchy if I turned up with a horse. Then it's more dashing."

"Dashing," his friend repeated, bemused and _there _was the smile, albeit a reluctant one. "So...that's how you try to seduce girls? No wonder you've never had a girlfriend."

"Nor do I desire one." Now Erik was wondering how and why this conversation had switched from the topic of his impending death to his lack of a lady love in his life.

"Really?" Ahmed asked skeptically. "I mean...I just figured since she's cute and - "

"Would you keep your voice down, please? She doesn't need to hear you rhapsodizing over her beauty. At two in the morning."

Snorting and feeling oddly awake and invigorated as was often the result of going six hours without talking to Erik and then engaging in conversation again, Ahmed pressed the issue a bit farther than the issue needed to be pressed. "Well, I mean, really, what did you want me to think? She's pretty, she seems to smile when you try to be funny, it's not like you're in high demand - "

"Look who's talking," Erik interrupted, though he did not seem angry, just...irked. "It's not like you're some kind of Don Giovanni."

"Well, no, I'm not a rapist."

"Be that as it may, please, tell me the last girlfriend you had...oh, wait, I remember. You 'went out' with Sarah Sorelli for two weeks, didn't you? Freshman year. And she let you touch her boob. I'll be that got you all hot and bothered. You've gotten farther on stage than you have in real life and isn't that a little sad?"

"Oh, please," Ahmed scoffed back. "Pot, meet kettle."

Erik gave him a dirty look and said, "Well, it's not like I _want _a female hanging off my arm and salivating all over me and denying me intercourse. And I even if I did, I wouldn't be projecting my own desire for intimate companionship on my friends, as you seem determined to do."

"Whatever," the other boy said, rolling over and turning his back to Erik, smiling a bit in the darkness. "I'll just go back to sleep – and quit staring at me. And _don't_ switch to staring at Christine. She wouldn't think it's hot. She would also think it's creepy."

"You people just don't appreciate my charm," Erik said, turning his back and staring out the window instead. "Just don't get the front seat dirty if you need to subconsciously vent your sexual frustrations. I am _not_ sitting in your bodily fluids if I have to drive tomorrow."

A soft snore was all that answered that demand. Briefly, Erik frowned for a moment, contemplating his friend's – okay, no _not _thinking about Ahmed having sex dreams. Definitely not. That was inappropriate and vulgar. And icky. Instead, he stared into the darkness outside the window and willed himself off to sleep.


	14. I'm All Alone

AN: I'm not at all satisfied with this chapter, but here it is for all it's worth. I needed to get the kids out of the wilds of upstate New York SOMEHOW so that the real theatre fun could start. Not as funny as past chapters, but it does open a bit of a window into the strange way Christine's mind works (and how well she will eventually fit in with this little band of freaks). And Charlotte gets to do more than sleep and bitch - Meg, unfortunately, is still background noise.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_I'm all alone  
All by myself  
There is no one here beside me  
I'm all alone  
Quite, all alone  
No one to comfort me or guide me  
Why is there no one here with me  
On the long and winding road?_

_-Spamalot_

Funnily enough, dressing statues up in people clothes was strangely exciting. Christine honestly thought that the real adrenaline-pumping highlight of the trip was going to be the non-setting off of fireworks, but it was oddly thrilling to just stand defiantly on a sidewalk, tying scarves around the bronzed necks of long-dead womens' rights activists. Especially when families walked by, giving them questioning, 'Is what they're doing _allowed?_' glances. Because Christine didn't know, and she didn't think anyone else did and it made her feel oddly brazen and devil-may-care to look back at them with a defiant expression of, 'What, we're dressing up statues, what are you gonna do about that, huh? Nothing, you ain't nothing. And what?'

It was clear that she really needed to get out more.

Erik had given them all a brief, rallying speech about their actions on this historic day. Oh yeah, he used the phrase 'historic day' and clambered up to the roof of the van to address them all, like...Caesar or someone important who liked to stand on things to deliver messages. Christine was relieved to find him in such good spirits in the morning, it seemed that he and Ahmed had worked out their little spat after she went to bed, which was awesome, it sucked when friends fought. And it definitely sucked worse when acquaintances you were roadtripping with fought, because it wasn't like you were informed enough to take sides or lend a sympathetic ear. Christine was still wondering what the big deal was, yeah, Erik probably should have been more careful, but she just wanted to laugh after he went all Judy Garland on them, since he was up and joking, so that meant he was okay, didn't it? Sure. Only Ahmed hadn't seen it that way and she didn't feel comfortable enough to ask either of them why. When she broached the subject with Meg and Charlotte in the restroom at the rest stop, both of them just sighed and said there wasn't any point trying to analyze it since Ahmed got annoyed when Erik did stupid things and Erik did stupid things to annoy Ahmed. It was their thing. How they worked, they said and it wasn't like Christine was going to argue the point, especially since everything seemed fine in the morning, Ahmed even gave Erik one of his McDonald's pancakes and McDonald's had the best instant-pancakes _ever_, so that was just brotherhood right there.

Oh, but yes, back to Erik's speech, which was stirring and dramatic. What they were doing was not defacement, he said, since the clothes, hats and wigs would be removed poste-haste once the pictures were taken. It was like...environmentally conscious temporary vandalism. They were just _borrowing_ the statues for a space of time long enough to properly clothe, enjoy and save for all eternity on a digital camera. What if there was some kind of freak lightening strike that melted the statue to nothing the night after they left Seneca Falls? Then they would have a record of the statue's last moments, as it was...well, its last moments in a cowboy hat and Ronald McDonald wig, but still, the image was captured for all posterity to look at and _wonder_.

Okay, so remembering it back to herself, it wasn't actually the most heart-rending, inspirational speech ever given, but at the time Erik was declaiming from the top of the van, she had been fairly enthralled. He was just a really persuasive speaker, something about the conviction in his voice and steely glint in his eyes that made her sit up a little straighter and think, _Yeah, we're totally performing a service, here_. Once the pictures were taken and they moved on to their next victim, naturally, the excitement of the moment dipped a little. They were less avenging warriors with boas and sequins and more...bored teenagers disrespecting history and being _really_ annoying to people just out to enjoy the scenery. It was quite a picturesque little town, really and they were just...momentarily enhancing it. Yeppers. No vigilantes in this crowd. Just stylists.

Erik, Freddy and Armand were really the ringleaders of their little troupe, the girls did a lot of handing props and making suggestions, but they seemed to know what they wanted on what lady and they were _very _focused on the task at hand. So focused that Erik didn't notice when tinny-sounding music began to issue from his back pocket, he didn't stop winding a long strand of fake pearls around the wrist of the statue he was working on. Neither Freddy nor Ahmed seemed aware either.

Mercifully, Charlotte paused from applying sunscreen to her arms to say, "Erik, your butt's ringing."

"Can you answer it?" he asked, eyes trained on the arrangement of shiny white balls.

"Oh fuck no, I'm not going _near_ that."

Sighing as though Charlotte was being unreasonable for refusing to cop a feel while searching for the source of the sound, Erik let go of his costume jewelry and squinted at the touch-screen. "Oh, for gods sake, Maddy," he grumbled, pressing some section of the phone that Christine at first thought was the 'off' button...until he thrust the phone at her. "Here, Christine, talk to my mom," he said absently, going back to what he was doing before his mother decided to call him, of all the inconvenient things a mother could do to her son.

Christine caught the phone awkwardly, staring at it for a minute as though she'd never seen anything quite like it (technically she hadn't – she'd never actually used an iPhone before). How was she supposed to talk into it? Not wanting to look like an idiot, she just sort of held the phone kind of near her mouth and said, hesitantly, "Um...hi?"

Fortunately, Madeline had an unnecessarily loud phone voice, so Christine had no problem understanding what Erik's mom was saying. "Hello? Who is this? Meg?"

"Um, no, hi, I'm Christine. I'm...going to go to school with Erik and...everyone. In the fall." Had Erik ever mentioned her to his mom? She couldn't see why he would. Yeah, okay, she'd mentioned Erik to her dad, but he was really interesting. She was incredibly boring, what would Erik ever have to say about her?

"_Oh, Christine! Erik said you were going along and he said you sang just _beautifully_ at your audition!"_

Oh. Well. That was unexpected. Nice, but unexpected. "Um. Thanks."

"_I'm Madeline, it's nice you talk to you – he does this a lot, don't feel singled out, I talk to his friends on the phone more than I talk to him. He's alright, isn't he? He's eating, right? Ahmed – can you pass me to Ahmed? Only he makes sure Erik eats."_

"Uh..." Christine's eyes flickered up to Ahmed who was fastening a large feather boa around Elizabeth Cady Stanton's neck. "Um. Erik's eating. He...Ahmed got him a burger last night. And a milkshake."

"_Well, that's new. Good though, he doesn't eat, I've been trying to fix that about him for years. So, Christine, are you having a good time?"_

"Uh..." This was starting to get repetitive. Erik's mom was going to think she was an idiot. Or hard of hearing. Or that English was her second language. The last two options, though not entirely desirable, were definitely better than having Erik's mom – Madeline? Christine didn't so much do calling adults by their first names – think she was the Missing Link. "Um yes, I'm having a lot of fun. It's...been a lot of fun. And a lot of driving." Wow. Alert the media. Christine Daee was officially the single most boring, least intelligible person on the _planet_ and now one of her brand new friend's parents was going to know that and they'd just strand her in Schroon Lake with the cannibals.

But Madeline did not demand that they sacrifice her to the hill people. On the contrary, she laughed (an unexpectedly pleasant sound in Christine's anxiety-riddled mind) and said, _"Yeah, I can't stand road trips myself, I hate being stuck in a car for so long. If it was possible to fly to the mall and back, I'd do it to cut down on travel time -"_

And then Christine could breathe again when Erik plucked the phone from her fingers with a hastily mouthed, 'Thanks.' Turning his back on the group, he set a stray beret on his head and started talking quickly into the phone. "Okay, woman, what is it that you want?"

Meg sidled up next to Christine, giving her a conspiratorial grin. "Maddy will talk your ear off if you let her, it's a good thing that Erik saved you."

"Oh..." Christine started hesitantly, not thinking that it would be great etiquette to insult someone else's mother after a thirty second phone conversation. "Um. She seemed nice."

Snorting, Meg saw right through the other girl's ruse. "Uh, yeah, that's one word you can use to describe her. She's nuts, I mean, she means well, but she's just...crazy. You'll meet her before long, you'll see where Erik gets it -"

"Shut the fuck up please," Erik called over his shoulder. "Okay, yeah, Mom, we're fine. Alive and everything, we'll be home tomorrow. Uh-huh. Yeah, I'm sure. Okay. Okay. Yes. No. Fine. We're fine. Yes, Ahmed is making me eat. It's like _Iron Jawed Angels_ up here. Okay. Okay. Yes. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye. Yes, I love you too, Mama. Okay. Bye. Seriously this time." And then he hung up, finding himself face to face with Freddy's wicked grin.

"_Aw, _Erik loves his mommy!"

Raising one eyebrow sardonically, Erik shot back, "And you don't?"

Feigning a look of utmost horror Freddy replied, "Of _course_ I love your mom! Your mom is fabulous! I want to _become_ your mom someday! When I was in third grade, the teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said Madeline Theroux."

Ahmed snorting and shook his head at that as Charlotte elaborated for Christine's sake, "Yeah, it's funny because it's true. And Erik kicked his chair. And got sent to the principle's office for abusing the furniture."

"I was a rebel without a cause," Erik remarked without irony on his misspent youth. "Okay, kids, one more picture and then I think we should pack up and ship out."

Christine really just wasn't sure what she thought about this bunch. She'd had idle fantasies whilst packing, bonding with people over just silly roadtrip things, like reaching 100,000 miles in the car or whatever and taking pictures of people sitting in the back of the car or getting a flat and...bonding over that. It wasn't that she expected that they would be best of friends...she just sort of _hoped _they would be. Friends, anyway, and now she didn't really know what had happened. Were they friends? Well...no, Christine didn't think so. But were they acquaintances? She wasn't sure. More than acquaintances, less than friends? That kind of...sucked, to be honest. But the weekend was rapidly ending and Christine didn't feel like she was going to be walking into St Mary's with ready-made friends – and to be perfectly honest, she wasn't sure any of them were actually friends either.

Maybe it was a bad thing that she had a penchant to over analyze _everything_, but the way they all acted toward one another was not particularly friendly. Actually, they seemed to barely tolerate one another and that was a little nerve-wracking. Christine was never really certain whether or not they were kidding or actually meant all of the...frankly, _mean _things they said to one another. She didn't act that way with her friends from high school. Granted, she didn't have too many friends in high school and those numbers had dwindled further once the summer started. She would get kind of close with kids she was in shows with, but those were more working relationships than actual friendships. It seemed like everyone she had gone roadtripping with had...something beyond a working relationship, certainly, but it didn't seem like they were overjoyed to be here. Yet they'd all gone, willingly, and aside from Charlotte, no one was complaining very much.

It was weird, she concluded. And they were weird and maybe she was weird in that she had gotten all caught up in Erik's statue speech and then yesterday she'd run off to set off store bought fireworks, but now things were clearing up for her...or not. Things seemed clearer when she was just going with the flow and not stepping back to think about things. At least she'd been participating, now she was just standing on the fringes of their conversation, frowning a bit to herself as she watched Freddy and Erik try to one-up each other with ever more elaborate 'your mom' jokes.

"Okay, this is fucking stupid," Charlotte interrupted, walking between them and dismantling the statues' costumes. "I am officially leading a coup. Christine, Meg, come on, it's time to bring down the sausage-fest regime. Who's with me?"

"I am!" Meg called out gleefully, giving Christine an encouraging nudge on the arm.

"Um..." Christine said for about the seventy-fifth time that day. "Yes! Um." Seventy-six. "Long live...vaginas?"

There was a brief moment of silence before Charlotte dropped the cowboy hat she removed from Amelia Bloomer's head and threw her arms around Christine. "Damn straight!" she cried gleefully. "Oh, honey, I knew you'd turn out to be one of us eventually."


	15. It Sucks To Be Me

AN: School's almost in session! I'm jumping ahead a bit in this fic, so let me get you caught up: The kids returned from upstate NY relatively unscathed and did NOT get lost in Schroon Lake again. Charlotte has decided that Christine is alright and sent her an invitation to join her Mafia in the addictive game Mafia Wars on Facebook. Christine accepted and figures that they're all friends now. Which...is more or less true. This chapter concerns Erik, Freddy and Ahmed moving into their sweet bachelor pad (read: Freddy's grandma's old house) for the school year. It's a cathartic release for me, I had to do a LOT of futon-moving recently and those things are evil. Also, this chapter features an unmasking scene...but Christine isn't involved and it's not terribly dramatic. Hope you enjoy! (And drop me a review if you do!) Also, the book Ahmed is reading, _An Abundance of Katherines_ is terrific, I highly recommend it to anyone who likes coming of age YA novels.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_It sucks to be you  
On Avenue Q  
Sucks to be us  
But not when  
We're together.  
We're together  
Here on Avenue Q!  
We live on Avenue Q!  
Our friends do too!  
'Til our dreams  
Come true,  
We live on Avenue Q!_

_-Avenue Q_

**To Whom It May Concern,**

**Fuck you.**

**There, now that I have your attention, I am writing to inform you that not putting handles on your futon mattresses was a severe oversight in your**

"No, no," Erik said, shaking his head from where he was reading over Freddy's shoulder. "It should say, 'neglecting to include handles in the production process of your futon mattresses was a great oversight'."

The clack-clacking of the 'backspace' button was paused only a few scant seconds after it had begun. "Does it really make a difference," Freddy asked Erik, pushing his glasses up his nose like the proverbial geek in every John Hughes movie ever made. Erik nodded sagely.

"It sounds better."

Freddy did not entirely believe that explanation, but it was better to appease his backseat typer than try to argue with him over something as unimportant as the wording in their angry letter to the futon company. Whatever that was.

The mattress was second-hand and utterly lacking tags, so they had no idea who had crafted it or when the futon had been birthed. Erik had briefly, but gleefully wondered whether they could report the craigslist seller to the FBI for removing mattress tags so that they could obtain the futon free of charge, but Ahmed was quick to point out that the mattress would be impounded as evidence and they wouldn't get it anyway. So they took the contraband futon for the asking price, which was thirty-five American dollars and a dozen oatmeal raisin cookies. Initially the guy wanted fifty dollars, but Freddy talked him down by throwing in the offer of homemade cookies. And they were...almost homemade. Homemade in the sense that Freddy stole some frozen cookie dough from work and baked it at his mom's house. The cookies were made _edible_ at someone's home and so that more or less upheld their portion of the bargain. It was simplicity itself to haul the mattress and frame into the back of Ahmed's hippie van from the craigslist guy's lawn. The issue of the mattress' decided lack of handles hadn't come up at all.

The problem had been transporting the mattress from the car, up the porch steps and into the living room, where it would hopefully live from September to May of that year. In an uncharacteristic show of machismo, Ahmed decided that he could move the entire thing himself. "It isn't heavy," he said as he dragged the lumpy, bulky rectangle from the back of the van. Heavy? Certainly not. Unwieldy? Definitely so. No sooner had Ahmed yanked the beast free of the vehicle than he found himself sprawled on the ground, pinned to the sidewalk by its negligible weight. Ahmed overestimated exactly how much force he had to exert to pull it free of the frame that had gotten stuck during the drive back to the house and his own momentum had forced him down onto the sidewalk where he struck his head so hard on the pavement that he saw stars. Well, flowers, actually. The (hideous) flower-patterened futon cover, to be precise.

After ascertaining that Ahmed's pride was hurt far more than his head, Erik laughed so hard, Freddy thought he was going to pull a muscle. Ahmed just lay there on the ground a few moments longer than was strictly necessary and seemed to take those extra seconds to resign himself to his fate. Right. So _this_ is what life with Erik and Freddy would be like. He really should have anticipated unexpected pain and laughter at his expense. "Fine, laugh it up," he muttered, ignoring the hand of assistance that Erik offered and got up under his own steam. Then he stood on the sidewalk with his arms folded, one eyebrow arched in evident expectation at Erik and Freddy.

It was a pretty good revenge, all things considered. Whatevers, yuk it up at his pain, sure, knock yourself out, but don't laugh and then expect any assistance with moving the Evil Mattress of Doom. At first, Ahmed's pouting didn't affect Erik and Freddy either way. It wasn't like the futon was _heavy_ or anything, how hard could it be?

Famous last words, apparently.

Within the first thirty seconds of transport, the two foolhardy young men realized that they had more on their hands than they bargained for. There was no good place to grip the damned thing (which is how they got on the topic of the decided lack of handles available on a futon mattress in the first place), so they kept dropping it. Freddy speculated that they might find some handles _under_ the (hideous) floral cover after they half-dragged it through the doorway, when it had fallen to the floor yet again.

The glare Erik gave him might have melted a snowman in mid-January. No way. No _way_, he said. In the first place, there probably weren't any handles under the (hideous) floral cover. In the second, there would be no way for them to get the mattress back _inside_ the (hideous) floral cover once it was removed.

"But it's in there now," Freddy reasoned, not understanding why Erik wouldn't take the necessary steps to make their lives - at least for the next ten minutes - just that little bit easier.

Erik only shook his head, slowly, pityingly, as though he felt sorry about Freddy's tragically diminished mental capacity. "Logical, but that's not the way the world works."

"It's the way physics works," Freddy mumbled, picking up one side of the mattress and waiting for Erik to do the same.

He didn't physically disappoint, but his words did. "I guarantee that if we remove the mattress from the cover, it will not fit back in. Will not. Never. Don't try it. I swear to God, you will weep with the force of your regret if you do so."

Being that he wasn't in a weeping mood, Freddy did not do so. Silently offering up a prayer that they would get the futon into the living room without any further incidents, he hefted the mattress up into his arms and began the long, slow trod into the rest of the house.

Miraculously, after another five drops and a litany of swears from the two of them in about four different languages (English, French, German, and Pig Latin), they did manage to get the mattress into the living room on the second floor. Ahmed had already gotten the frame upstairs while Erik and Freddy set about picking up dining room chairs that they had overturned in their walk around the house. The house had belonged to Freddy's grandmother, before she moved to Florida five years ago and so came with overpriced, somewhat wildly upholstered furniture that most college students were not fortunate enough to have. Most kids didn't get dining room sets complete with antique sideboards and right now, neither Freddy nor Erik were feeling particularly grateful since it was the sideboard that caught the edge of the mattress and caused them to lose their grips...again. This was fast becoming an exercise in futility, but a bit of perseverance they managed to wrestle it up the staircase and Erik finally slid it across the floor where it remained since the two inexperienced movers decided that they had quite enough of this tomfoolery and _insisted _on writing a letter to the company that had manufactured that mattress.

There was one small problem with that plan. It was a craigslist purchase with no labels, no tags and no company name printed anywhere that they could find. Oh well, Freddy said, it would just have to be an open letter. They could post it on 'Missed Connections' on craigslist and hopefully _someone_ would see it who had some kind of say in futon manufacturing. Ahmed sat on the floor in the corner bitching quietly to himself as they typed, (since _he_ certainly wasn't going to put the damn thing together without help while Mr and Mr Customer Satisfaction wrote some kind of Dear John-style consumer report).

"In conclusion," Freddy narrated as he typed (and wasn't that the most annoying personality trait ever?), "we the people think that you should take our suggestions to heart and install handles on your futon mattress. In addition, we would appreciate your sending a representative of your company to our home to put the futon together since after the trauma of this afternoon, we have no desire to labor any longer over your sub-par products. Thank you for your time. Signed...um, how do you want to sign it?"

Erik shrugged, "Paying customers?"

"We didn't pay _them_, though," Freddy said. "We paid Carl."

"Love, Carl?"

"What if Carl sees it?"

"Who cares?"

"Point," Freddy resumed clacking on the keyboard. "Love, Carl. There. Nice. Done...and sent. We are the most badass retail motherfuckers on the eastern seaboard." Ahmed snorted skeptically. Oh yeah, utterly badass, writing letters they never intended to send to companies that may or may not exist any longer.

Eventually the boys got tired of making their mark on the internet. They even gave into the silent taunting of the lowly mattress and hoisted it up onto it's frame. Still intent on revenge, all three of them clambered on top of it, making lasting butt-prints on the (hideous) floral cover to commence one of their favorite time-wasting activities: smoking and watching _Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction? _The lines between reality and blatant falsehood were pleasantly blurred when under the influence of a mind-altering substance, thus making the experience far more suspenseful than it might otherwise have been. The sun was going down. The house was filled with unpacked boxes and none of them really had beds to sleep on, but watching their favorite trash television series hosted by the former First Officer of the starship _Enterprise _was enough to make things feel homey.

The current act of the hour-long episode they were watching concerned a not-very-attractive-but-not-so-unattractive-as-to-invite-comment-woman discovering that true beauty is entirely external. Also there was a burn victim involved. And, of course, Freddy had an opinion about it all.

"She's not even ugly, she's just got...I don't know, sun damage. It's not like she's missing an ear or something."

Erik raised a brow at that. "What, so missing an ear would preclude her from an active social life?"

"No," Freddy said defensively. "It's just that...okay, so if you were missing an ear, you might be reluctant to branch out, right, I understand this, but if you're just...freckled, that's not going to stop people from talking to you." Yawning, he snuggled up against Erik's bony shoulder, eyes closing. "I think I'm going to sleep here."

Either too tired or too high to care, Erik settled down into the lumpy futon mattress and essentially snuggled back without actively snuggling. Since that way hella gay. And not in a good way. "Whatever. I might actually go to bed at some point," Erik said, scrunching up his face as he yawned, fingers brushing up against the fleshy protrusion in the middle of his face that was beginning to come loose after having been sweat on all afternoon. Automatically, Erik started to peel it off before remembering himself and dropping his hand with a sigh.

"What's up, Drama Queen?" Ahmed asked, not actually turning his eyes from the television to look at Erik; his friend's sigh was a sound that Ahmed was extremely familiar with. It was the background music of his life, really.

"Nothing," Erik replied tersely.

"Man-period?" Freddy asked, glancing across Erik's chest to look at Ahmed who was still watching the magical burn victim on _Chiller_.

"Fuck you people," Erik replied, but there wasn't any real ire in his tone. Just annoyance and it wasn't really directed at Freddy. "I'm not supposed to sleep with _this_ on," he grumbled and both boys knew instantly what he was talking about. "It's..."

"Like contact lenses?" Freddy supplied helpfully, resuming his former snuggle-position. "Seriously, Erik, I don't care if you go all Jack Skellington on me. It's your house too."

It _would_ be much easier to just take it off and not have to deal with skin irritation, lesions and the inevitable clogged pores that came with wearing the false nose for days at a time. And hey, they were watching magical burn victims on a show hosted by Jonathan Frakes. Compared to that, tossing his nose on the coffee table would be downright mundane. And so, with minor difficulty, Erik removed the offending prosthesis and set it tip-down on top of Ahmed's copy of _An Abundance of Katherines _(a book Erik had recommended to him about three months ago - it told his story. Well, it would if his story included many failed romantic relationships).

"Move that," Ahmed said, again without glancing away from the television. "I don't want your plastic snot on my library books. Also, this, with her burn-victim leprechaun shenanigans? _Never _happened."

"Never," Erik agreed, nudging the nose onto the glass table-top. Against his arm, Freddy nodded sleepily and said, apparently out of the blue, "Guys? I'm really glad we're living together this year."

This time, Ahmed _did_ look away from the television, glancing up at Erik who shrugged and exhaled somewhat loudly through his nose-hole. It was a decent way of covering up the base emotions that plagued him from time to time. Breathe out. Hard. "Yeah," he said, the utmost nonchalance in his tone. "I guess you guys are alright."


	16. Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile

AN: Wow, TWO reviews for the last chapter! No word of a lie, I was very excited by that (yes, I'm a sad little attention whore) and they motivated me to churn out this quick little Christine filler chapter before the school year begins. I swear, there IS a plot emerging, promise! Miss Thing just needs to get herself settled with her brand new best friends and then we can rock out in the world of college theatre. Erik's a bit of a background player, but we do see some of his stalker-tendencies emerging in that he has a freakish attention to detail and ability to remember things that people tell him. Don't forget to be on the look-out for Phantom references, it's like a scavenger hunt!

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright. Also the pork ravioli at TGIF is DELICIOUS.

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_Who cares what they're wearing  
From Main Street, to Saville Row,  
It's what you wear from ear to ear  
And not from head to toe that matters!_

_So, Senator, so, Janitor,  
So long for a while remember,  
You're never fully dressed  
Without a smile!_

_-Annie_

Evidently, what Christine had done to be considered 'one of us' all those weeks ago, was to agree with Charlotte. It made all the difference that she didn't entirely understand just what it was she was agreeing to, the offer of agreement was made just to appease the other girl. Also, she had said the word 'vagina' aloud while standing on a public street and since Charlotte caused quite a stir by trying to run a production of the infamous _Vagina Monologues_ in high school, that earned her some unwitting extra points. The life-skill of agreeing with Charlotte Mendoza was one that few mastered, and even amongst her closest friends, there were notable lapses. When explaining to Christine why she was suddenly 'in,' Charlotte had aimed that particular observation at Erik with a splendidly pointed glare. It was truly masterful, but Erik just looked for all the world as though he had no idea _what _the red haired wonder could be talking about.

In any case, Charlotte decided that Christine was alright and so invited her to join her Facebook mafia and it was Charlotte, not Erik, who called Christine to inform her that 'they' were going to TGI Friday's and did she want to come? Of course Christine said yes and immediately got into her car and started driving to Rhode Island. It kind of really sucked that she lived in Mass and everyone else was at least a half an hour away. She hadn't really spent any actual in-person time with anyone after the roadtrip since their schedules didn't mesh. When she mentioned her slight melancholy and separation anxiety to Erik on AIM one night, he told her not to worry about it. "You'll see way more of us than you can stand in the coming months," he wrote ominously. Erik always did things ominously. His AIM font was red on a black background and his Away Message was some weird poem which read:

**When thy sheep thou hast selected**

**From the goats, may I, respected,**

**Stand amongst them undetected.**

**On that day of lamentation,**

**When, to enjoy the conflagration,**

**Men come forth, O be not cruel:**

**Spare me, Lord—make them thy fuel.**

It took her about four weeks of seeing it to realize it was a joke and Erik wasn't a suicidally depressed uber-Catholic. Satire wasn't her literary strong suit. That was why it had taken her so long to actually get Erik's sense of humor – that was, to get that Erik _had _a sense of humor. For a while she just thought that he was one of those people who said funny things without actually meaning to be funny. What Christine misunderstood was that Erik did say things to be intentionally funny, she just wasn't quick enough on the uptake to get any of his jokes, but she was learning. Adapting. And just sort of smiling when Erik said something she didn't understand. Not that he could see smiles through the computer or telephone, but she would 'lol' often and just hope they were appropriately timed.

But she'd probably be spending a lot more time around Erik and his sense of humor once school started. Since St. Mary's tried to group people who shared a major and a concentration in the dorms, Christine found out that she would be sharing a room with Meg and another girl she didn't know named Sarah E. Sorelli. Meg went to school with her (of course, they _all _went to school together) and said that she was a really fun girl...but they should probably give her the single bed. That remark seemed a little strange to Christine, but she just figured that Sarah was a little anal about neatness, so it would be better to give her a side of the room to herself.

As Christine traveled down the highway, she found herself getting a little reflective. She was a lonely, only child and it had just been her and her dad for years, it was going to be a big adjustment to suddenly have two female roommates _and_ share a bathroom. She had never shared a bathroom with anyone, what if they did...well, even if they did all the things that she did to keep clean, it still sort of skeeved her out to think that she'd be sharing a shower with another person. Maybe that was a little anal of _her_ to have such a squicked out reaction to the idea of someone else's hair in the shower drain, but the thought made Christine shudder and gag a little. But she would get over it. Dad had been regaling her with stories from his own college days, communal bathrooms and athlete's foot and weird drunken nights with his fraternity (though aside from one story involving regurgitated chicken parm as a morality tale on the dangers of drinking, Dad tended to avoid speaking overmuch about his exploits as a frat boy).

If she was going to be completely honest with herself, the 'typical' college stuff didn't actually appeal to Christine. She'd never been drunk and didn't see what the appeal in drinking until you vomited or passed out was (and she didn't like the taste of alcohol to boot). Joining a sorority was right out. Never. Not in a million years. An avid Lifetime viewer, Christine had seen _Dying to Belong_ one too many times to overlook the threat of hazing or mildly homicidal sorority sisters. So there would be no toga parties in her immediate future, just glorious educational theatre (and a few pesky gen eds that would hopefully require minimal effort to pass). How dorky was it that the thing she was most looking forward to about going to college was classes? Probably very, but it wasn't _just_ the classes, it was also the people _in _the classes. Meg was a sweet girl and Charlotte and Freddy were really funny and Erik was...well, he defied category. Ahmed was a bit of an enigma, but he spent most of their trip being annoyed with Erik, so Christine figured that she hadn't seen him at his best. Even so, he'd been very nice to her, so she had every reason to believe that all the other kids in their little company would be just as great.

Or so she hoped.

Prayed, would be more accurate. She just didn't cope well with unknown stress.

Worries about foot fungus and mean girls aside, Christine was in high spirits when she arrived at the restaurant. She _loved_ Friday's, especially their pork ravioli, which was all she was going to be eating that evening. Not because she was watching her waistline (deep-friend pasta and pork products not helpful in that area, regardless of delciousness), but because she was just a _little _strapped for cash. During the summers, Christine worked at a camp for kids and the arts for minimum wage and maximum sunburn. She had yet to find autumnal employment and was careful not to go _too _crazy with spending before she secured a job. If she needed some monetary assistance, Christine had no doubt whatsoever that her dad would be there in a heartbeat with his checkbook, but she didn't want to take advantage of her dad's generous nature. Not that he would be resentful or anything, but Christine didn't want to be one of those kids who went back to their parents' house every weekend because they were tired of eating Easy Mac out of the microwaves. She would buy her Easy Mac and eat it too, dammit.

But for now, fried pork products. (Sorry, PETA.)

The AA crew was easily identifiable by a collective, "CHRISTINE!" that was shouted over the loud music and louder patrons near the bar at the semi-trendy chain eating establishment. They were all seated at two tables that had been pushed together by the wait staff under a photo of John Lennon next to a skateboard mounted to the wall. What the two things had to do with one another Christine had no idea, but it was trendy, so she just dismissed it as part of the hipster ambiance. Grinning, she side-stepped a waitress and ducked under a low-hanging lamp to meet Meg and Freddy who had risen from their seats for hugs and kisses. Charlotte half-stood, half-tugged Christine into a hug when she reached the table, while Ahmed and Erik just waved. Christine suspected that neither of them were really huggers, so she just smiled extra-brightly at them, hoping to hug them with the shiny brightness of her teeth. Wow. That was an awkward metaphor. In any case, she just wanted to be friendly.

"We're getting pork ravioli," Erik told her. "It wasn't my idea, but I don't recall you mentioning any dietary restrictions in the past and vegans and vegetarians are usually fairly outspoken about their lifestyle choices."

Joke! Well...Christine thought there was a joke in there somewhere and so responded by tittering a bit and twirled her hair around her fingers, as she often did when she was a little nervous. "No, no, I eat meat. Actually, I was going to get that for dinner, but I guess my wallet can deal with real food." Right portion, right price, right?

As though she'd just said the Word of the Day, everyone around the table replied with some variation of, "Don't worry, if you need a few dollars I can spot you." Christine blinked just a bit and smiled again. "Oh, no, guys, don't worry about it. I've got some money, I'm just...being careful about spending all of it before winter break since I don't have...like, renewable income or whatever. Seriously_,_" she added to Ahmed who'd removed five dollars from his wallet and was dangling it in front of her nose.

It might have been insulting if Christine's mind was quick to travel to the gutter, but fortunately it was not. Erik did give Ahmed a sharp elbow in the ribs and he returned his money to his pocket with a small frown directed at his friend. Meg, whose disposition was as sunny as her mind was dirty, scrunched up her nose and said, "Oh, come _on_, Ahmed, she doesn't need a job at the Satin Doll for Pete's sake." Oh yeah, that was Meg. Talking about strip clubs and then using an expression like 'Pete's sake' in the same breath. Classic Meg.

Only one person actually seemed to be taking this seriously – a fact that was almost as odd as Meg being well acquainted with the names of Providence houses of sin. "You need a job, Christine?" Freddy asked and he seemed slightly surprised by the idea that she was unemployed. Then again, Freddy had been making his own money since he joined the ranks of altar boys at his church when he was eight and most kids just weren't that industrious. The young lady in question just shrugged at him.

"Well yeah," she said, tucking blonde curl safely into the hair claw at the back of her head. "I mean, I need some money. I was a camp counselor this summer, but I'm not really..._qualified_ to do anything real. I can't type, I can't use Excel - "

"Can you scoop ice and get most of it into a cup?" Freddy asked, leaning across the table, oddly business-like. "Can you pour cream from a container? Put pressure on a nozzle? Turn a dial?"

"Um, yes," Christine replied, slightly confused (as if that was anything new). "I can do all of these things." Far more easily than she could work a pole. Yeah, it took her this long to understand all the stripper references.

The curly-haired boy extended a hand and gave Christine a wide smile. "Congratulations, you're The Bistro's newest barista." Evidently, she looked less than convinced because Freddy added, "Oh, I'm the manager of this one, I mean, I can't _technically_ hire you, but just come tomorrow and fill out an application, I'll tell Helen to bump you to the front of the line. I have considerable power there."

"And he makes the schedule, so you can pretty much work whenever you want," Charlotte said, rearranging menus since the waiter had arrived with their beverages. Erik took the liberty of ordering a Diet Coke for Christine before she arrived, since he remembered their conversation about how she doesn't have an eating disorder or anything, she just thought that normal Coke was too sweet for consumption. It was kind of cute that he remembered, she could barely remember what she ate for dinner from one day to the next.

"Charlotte's been working food prep for over a year now," Freddy said proudly. "She's the best panini maker I know. Someday Christine, perhaps, just perhaps, you too will be able to claim that kind of title." Charlotte rolled up the sleeve of her sweater and struck a muscle pose, like a modern day Rosie the Riveter in Macy's chic.

"And my left arm is _slightly_ bigger than my right from scooping up _really _cold gelato all summer long. Someday, Christine, perhaps, just perhaps, you too will be the proud owner of a slightly deformed bicep." And then Charlotte rolled her eyes, utterly destroying her image as The Bistro's employee of the year.

Christine smiled a little wryly this time and said, "So...do _all _of you work there? It seems like you guys do everything together."

"I know, right?" Meg exclaimed, looking around at her friends. "I say that all the time, I think it's weird, like, who else hangs out with their kindergarten friends? No one. We're such freaks."

"Wow, Megatron, don't hold back, tell us how you _really_ feel," Ahmed said, shooting the paper from his straw directly into Meg's face.

"Like that!" she said, throwing the paper right back at him. "I mean, who has lame nicknames for their teenage friends? No one. It's like you're my sperm donor or something."

Christine just about choked on her Diet Coke. Yelling about vaginas in public was one thing, but talking about spermatozoa at the dinner table? Totally not kosher. Ever helpful, probably feeling bad about her little gaffe, Meg pat Christine on the back and winced a little. "Sorry! Was that my fault? Probably. Yeah, I don't have a dad, I forgot you didn't know. My mom's a feminist."

"Uh..." was all Christine could choke out for a minute. Erik had looked away from her and was giggling like a little girl into his fist as he fought to hide the enormous grin on his face. Crazy. Christine wasn't even trying to be funny. Clearly the misunderstanding of each other's senses of humor was mutual on both sides.

"I'm sorry..." Erik said, evidently having trouble breathing. "The look on your face was just..."

And then he did something that Christine didn't expect. He disappeared under the table, his laughter not abating in the slightest, it only got louder after his head became concealed by the polished wooden tabletop. Ahmed, looking slightly bored, just intoned a soothing, "There, there, dear," somewhat monotonously as he pet Erik on the head...which he had apparently placed atop Ahmed's lap.

"If you had any suspicions about our sanity, I guess those are pretty much gone now, huh?" Charlotte asked, shaking her head sadly at Erik who was still in hysterics beneath the table. "But we're really not as co-dependent as you think - "

"I work in a library," Ahmed interjected abruptly...defensively one might say. "No one else works in a library."

"And I leech off my mother," Meg said cheerfully. "Since she brought me into this world by herself, it's her responsibility to care for me until I die. And I have other friends! Dance friends. Dance friends who don't like my school friends at all!"

"That's because they're...airheads," Charlotte told Meg airily, then smiled sweetly at the waiter who brought their appetizer. Apparently she'd been thinking of a word that was a little stronger than 'airheads,' but one doesn't want to go about offending local restaurant workers. "I don't know how you can stand them, Meg, they're really...not that bright."

"Yeah, well, I have fun with my other friends," Meg said with a shrug, reaching out and grabbing a hot ravioli off the plate. "Fun in the sense that I enjoy spending time with them and – does double-dipping gross you out, Christine? No? Oh, good, we're going to be the best roomies, I'm so stoked – but yeah, and I have a good time when we go out, but it's different with us." Grinning happily at Erik who was going for the napkins to wipe of his damp cheeks, she just shook her head and directed her beaming grin at Christine. "I mean, I've never buried my face in someone's crotch and laughed until I cried with my other friends."

Did Christine understand these people? No. Not one little bit. But having people around who didn't mind double-dipping with near strangers, who remembered that she loved Diet Coke and, yeah, who talked about sperm and laughed in their friend's laps at the dinner table was not a bad thing as far as she was concerned. Not a bad thing at all. And if she had an 'in' with this quirky crowd, that was great. Even if it was an in she didn't understand that meant she smiled and loled when it was inappropriate to do so. She had a feeling that none of them would judge her for it.


	17. Holding Out For A Hero

AN: FINALLY, we get the kids in an educational theatre environment and I get the WHOLE cast together, all main teenage characters in the same room, even! You guys know what this means, it's time for Raoul to make an appearance! Poor guy, he just doesn't know what he's in for...which can pretty much describe every permutation of Raoul throughout all the various versions of the story, right? He just wants his happily ever after, dammit, is that so much to ask? Of COURSE it is! And just as a matter of course, do drop me a review if you have the time, I'd love to get some feedback (and I know SOME people ARE reading this story, don't try to deny it!) This is one of the longer chapters I've written and the whole scene is a LOT longer, so I've split it in two, don't mind Erik's weak attempt at a cliffhanger.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright. The relaxation exercise is lifted from my own V&M classes, to which this chapter is dedicted, with love. No sarcasm.

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_Where have all the good men gone  
And where are all the gods?  
Where's the street-wise Hercules  
To fight the rising odds?  
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?  
Late at night I toss and turn and dream of what I need..._

_-Footloose_

"You are _flying up_, over your body, _through_ the ceiling, up over the Fine Arts Center, higher,_ higher_ into the air. _Now_ you can see the tops of the trees, just the _peaks_ of rooftops, maybe you can _glimpse the ocean_, far _off_ in the distance..."

Strains of something that sounded suspiciously Enya-esque could be vaguely heard in the background, something about spoons, overlapping with the smooth, even cantor of the woman's voice. Sometimes Christine's mind focused on the smoothly warbling female voices blending together while triangles chimed, other times she found herself going on this mystical journey into the cosmos. If she cared to continue on the journey, she would be coming to a tree in a minute and Christine chose to approach her tree since, if she took too much time to think about how utterly bizarre her first day of college was turning out to be, she might just get up and run down the street to Enrollment Services to become an English Major since _clearly _theatre classes weren't real school.

To digress from the journey to the cosmic tree, for a moment, it might be best to explain how Christine came to be lying on her back in a pitch-black room, staring out at infinity with her mind's eye. It all began late last night when she finally moved into her suite-style dormitory. Technically move-in was between eight in the morning and four in the afternoon (there was a fire drill at five that she'd missed), but Dad's girlfriend Valerie was coming back from two months in China that afternoon and needed someone to pick her up from the airport, but her plane was delayed, so they wound up at Logan for three _hours_ past when they were supposed to leave and Christine had been on the verge of tears the entire time because what if they gave her room away when she didn't arrive?

Freaking out entirely on the car ride to St Mary's, she frantically called Meg to tell her that _yes_, she was coming, if someone else tried to take her bed, bar the door and make up some excuse about how Christine (and all her furnishings) were in the bathroom. Meg assured her that she would chain herself to the bed should such a thing happen, but in the meantime, would she like to talk to the RA?

_WHAT?! _Christine had fairly squawked into the phone. No! She couldn't talk to the RA, then the RA would know that she wasn't in the bathroom and their plan would be DOOMED. Meg put her on anyway. The RA turned out to be a really nice music major named Karen who said that, hey, shit happens, the bed would be there when Christine showed up. All in all, a lot of fuss over nothing, but that was what Christine did best.

By the time she got to the dorm, it was dark out and Meg and Sarah E. Sorelli had already set their beds up. Meg cheerfully consented to take the top bunk, since there really wasn't anything she didn't do cheerfully, and she thought it would make the whole experience seem like sleep-away camp rather than school. Lots of boxes were still piled around the room, containing more decorative touches and a few stuffed animals that made Christine feel significantly better about stowing away her stuffed penguin Dudley in the bottom of her backpack. Neither girl was in the room, they'd gone out to eat with some of the kids in the program and a few adult members of the staff that they all knew. Meg told Christine that they were going to IHOP because Charlotte was in a crepes mood and they could definitely wait for her, but Christine just told her to go ahead since Valerie and her dad wanted to take her out for dinner before they went back to their lives and left her all alone to fend for herself in the big, bad world of college.

Since she'd been gone for most of the summer, Valerie wanted to squeeze in as much quality time as possible and so insisted on mini-golf in addition to dinner, so it was a _really _late night once they made Christine's uncomfortable, plastic mattress as soft as possible with egg carton-like foam and big pillows, then went off to play a round and ride the go-carts at Adventureland. In the end, they'd decided on Denny's as their dining destination of choice and when Christine got back to the room after an embarrassingly tearful goodbye to people who were an hour away on the interstate, both girls were asleep in bed already.

It was a _little_ strange that Christine hadn't met Sarah yet, she reflected upon waking and seeing the single bed unmade and empty. Meg was still around, brushing her teeth in the bathroom and she informed Christine that Sorelli had risen early to jog before her first class. Like an idiot, at least the way Meg told it, Sorelli waited until the last minute to sign up for classes and hadn't been able to find a Finite Math class that met any later than eight o'clock in the morning. Christine grimaced in pity, if not empathy. She'd signed up for her classes as quickly as possible and decided to hold off on math until next semester, so she didn't have to wake up for anything that met prior to ten in the morning, which was when her Voice and Movement class was held, the class she was currently lying on the ground and breathing in.

Meg was taking a language class at nine, so she had to run, which left Christine all alone in the room that the three of them shared. She'd stared up at the metal rods that held Meg's mattress up for about fifteen minutes, letting it all sink in that she was in _college _and that this was her _life_ now and was she _ever _going to meet her third roommate and _why _did Meg only refer to her by her last name and _Jesus_ this room was small now that she looked at it. There was barely enough room for the two bed structures (Sorelli's was lofted, with enough room for a mini-fridge that Meg brought, a microwave that Christine donated and a bureau that came with the room), two other bureaus and two desks. Two desks for three people, Christine wasn't quite sure how the math worked out on that one, but she had a laptop and didn't think she was going to spend a lot of time writing out her papers by hand anyway, so they'd cross that bridge when they came to it.

Not quite brave enough to go off to eat breakfast in a dining hall by herself, Christine unwrapped a granola bar from the food supplies that she'd brought with her and contemplating her clothing options for the day. She had Voice and Movement at ten, an English class (Brit Lit 1, whatever that meant) at twelve and Acting at three o'clock at Memorial Rep. The Voice and Movement class was held in the campus Fine Arts Center, but the majority of her theatre classes took place at the professional theatre, about a half an hour drive on the highway from the school. Tim sent an email a few weeks prior asking which kids had on-campus transportation and told them to meet in front of the FAC to carpool to the theatre in the interest of saving gas, money and the environment. Ahmed volunteered his van (apparently gifted to him for the duration of the year), Freddy had a five-passenger Toyota Camry from 1990 that still had about five thousand miles to go before he _really_ needed to think about getting it replaced and Charlotte had a VW bug that would fit four comfortably, but they'd need to sit on her stuff if no one cared about that since she was _not _cleaning out her car for them. Christine could practically hear Tim's sigh across the internet when he said that would be adequate and if anyone wanted to drive themselves, he would more than understand.

Since she would be stepping into a Real Professional Theatre that day, Christine thought that it would be a good idea for her to dress like a Real Professional Actress, but the email she received from her Voice and Movement teacher instructed them to wear sweats. "Zippers will not be tolerated," was the ominous closing message. Hmm. Conundrum. After a solid ten minutes of waffling, Christine decided that she would wear leggings, a pretty floral dress she had in jersey fabric and just bring a big t-shirt to change into at the FAC and flip-flops. That was professional in a casual way, wasn't it? She had to shave her legs to pull off that particular ensemble and shaving one's legs definitely indicated that a girl meant business.

Turned out she didn't need to worry about the t-shirt after all. When Christine arrived in Fine Arts Studio G, all the lights were turned down as low as it was possible for them to go, with only a dim orange haze barely illuminating the lines of half a dozen bodies lying motionless on the floor. For a second, Christine froze upon entering and seriously entertained the idea that she had walked into the quietest school shooting _ever_ and what was she going to do? A deep, soothing woman's voice coming from the darkness to her left made her jump, but all the voice told her to do was pick a spot on the floor, lie there and _breathe_.

It was rare to actually hear the italics in a person's voice as they spoke, but that was just one of their instructor's many talents, it seemed. If the university website was correct, then this disembodied voice belonged to a woman named Eileen Miller. It was hard to tell precisely how old she was, she had one of those eternally youthful faces that might be twenty-five or forty-five and her 'About Me' paragraph did nothing but list her credentials. She had an impressive resume, she worked in theatres around the country, doing a lot of community outreach work and she'd recently spent some time in South America, doing something called Theatre of the Oppressed which Christine knew _nothing _about, but it sounded cool. Ms. Miller was also a certified yoga instructor, so while her student hadn't known what to expect from Voice and Movement, she hadn't expected darkness and trying to convince herself that she was flying when what she was really doing was lying on a stiff, smooth surface. A dance room? Maybe, but she couldn't _see_ anything, so what did it matter?

A third sound rose up over the soothing mantra of the teacher's voice (now they were...flying around the tree? Christine wasn't sure anymore) and the dreamy singing. This sound was refreshingly mundane and it broke the otherworldly atmosphere of the dim room. It seemed that the singing, the soft speaking and darkness combined with a college student's chronic sleep deprivation to cause one of their number to fall asleep; someone was snoring. It sounded like a guy, but then, everyone sounded distinctly masculine when they were snoring so it was hard to tell. Christine had to bite her lip to keep from giggling as the teacher turned up the music, probably to block out the snoring. Someone snorted directly behind her, a snort that was definitely humor-induced and she felt a sudden rush of camaraderie with this unseen presence in the dark, thank God someone else found this as silly as she did.

The one snort of laughter seemed to set off a chain reaction. There was a snort here, a stifled giggle there, some vague murmuring closer to the far side of the room and another shrill giggle from whoever was close enough to hear the quiet comment. Their instructor's voice went quiet and then the music cut out abruptly as bright redness invaded Christine's eyelids. Squinting into the now harsh glow of the florescent lights, she sat up a bit and stared groggily around the room, waiting for people and faces to come into focus as the teachers started talking. Weirdly enough, she didn't seem angry, there was a definite smile in her expressive voice.

"Not bad, kids," she said, and Christine looked up to see Ms Miller from the photo standing over her. She wasn't particularly tall, but was buxom and short waisted, barefoot in sweatpants and a colorful cotton top. Slightly limp brown curls were swept up and away from her face by a plastic hair claw and she was beaming at the room behind what could only be described as thick, black birth control glasses. There was again that blandly pretty round face and Christine really had no idea what the woman's age was, even though she was less than two feet from her. "You made it ten minutes into the exercise before cracking. I don't care if you fall asleep or stay awake – clearly, I prefer if you're awake, but it's not a big deal if you fall asleep if no one _else_ makes it a big deal, capisce? And wake that boy up, please, someone."

Christine blinked again and looked around the room, trying to identify the sleeper (who she suspected might have been Ahmed, just because he sort of sounded like that when he snored, based on the one experience she had of hearing him as he slept). As it turned out, Ahmed was wide awake and at the other side of the room from her entirely. It seemed that he'd been the person who started talking after people started laughing. Erik was there also and wide awake, looking a little odd in his black sweats and faded Beatles t-shirt, he only ever wore button-down shirts, vests and nice jeans or pants when Christine had seen him. She spied everyone from the road trip, all wide awake and looking as dazed as she felt, in addition to two girls and a guy that she'd never seen before (one of them had to be Sarah E. Sorelli, but Christine did not remember her Facebook picture clearly enough to pick her out – she was fairly confident in eliminating the boy from her consideration, however). No, the sleeper was someone she didn't know and hadn't seen on Facebook...and from the curious way everyone was looking at and the fact that no one had laughed and poked him awake yet, Christine had a funny feeling that she wasn't alone in her ignorance of his identity.

Sleeping Beauty was wearing sweats and a t-shirt (a nondescript rugby style shirt, as a matter of interest) like everyone else, but _damn it_, he was a cutie pie. Even though he had that slightly underdeveloped look that came standard with most eighteen year old boys, he was working his way out of the 'cute' stage into what could definitely be classified as 'handsome.' Classically handsome in an All-American way, he had straight blonde hair that fanned back from his head a bit as he lay on the ground, clear skin, tanned from summer vacation and even had a cleft in his square chin. Christine only thought people had clefts in their chins in movies. Turning to look at Meg, Christine mouthed as clearly as she could to her, _'Who's that?'_ but Meg only shrugged and she really couldn't tell whether the shrug meant that her roomie didn't know who he was or she couldn't read Christine's lips well.

Being the only practical human being in the room, it seemed (also the closest) Charlotte reached over and very gently poked the sleeping kid on the shoulder. He frowned a little in his sleep, then started awake, blinking vividly blue eyes (blue! Christine's favorite guy-eye color!) in confusion, then a small self-conscious smile appeared on his face as he realized what happened. "Sorry," he said, sitting up a bit and grinning nervously around the room at everyone. "I...uh...I got really relaxed. Did I miss anything?"

For whatever reason, that made most of the girls (and Freddy) titter nervously as though the boy had just said something clever. Ahmed, Unidentified Boy Number One, Erik and a tall, thin brunette who may or may not be Sarah E. Sorelli remained immune. Naturally, Christine giggled nervously and blushed when she accidentally locked eyes with Unidentified Boy Number Two. The grin widened and showed of his dimples and Christine's blush only got redder. Mercifully, Ms. Miller broke in at that moment and eye contact was lost as both students looked at their teacher.

"No more than anyone else did, Mr...?"

"Oh! Um. Chaney. Raoul, um, actually. Raoul's my first name," he said somewhat sheepishly, brushing his hair back from his head with one hand.

"Your name is _Raoul?_" Freddy asked, seeming incredulous.

"Uh, yeah," the newly-identified Raoul said, favoring Freddy with another of his absolutely _killer_ grins. "It's...a family name or something. It's...different."

Freddy shrugged and smiled one of his own killer grins at Raoul, though his freckles and red curls just made it read as more 'boyish' than anything else. "It sounds like the name of some gay fetish porn star, you mean?"

Wow, if that was Freddy's way of flirting, Christine thought he _really_ needed to work on his technique. Then again, she didn't even know _how _to flirt, so Freddy was way ahead of her in that he actually tried. And Raoul didn't seem horrified, he just sort of laughed softly and said, "Okay, that's a new one," before looking at Ms. Miller as if worried that they were in violation of a syllabus they had not received regarding the rules of talking in class, but that did not seem to be the case.

On the contrary, she was still smiling at them and then waved her hands at Freddy and Raoul and an encouraging manner. "No, no, don't let me stop you, keep going! I'm serious, I want you guys to feel like this is a safe place, where you can explore, you can't do that if you're not comfortable, so get comfortable! I need to write up your syllabus anyway, so just chat, I'll be with you guys in a bit."

And just like that...she was gone.

"Uh...okay," the brunette who hadn't laughed at Raoul said, looking from the door to her fellow classmates. "Is this a test? Is she actually really pissed? Are we in trouble already?"

Charlotte was frowning, her brow furrowed. "I don't think so," she said cautiously. "I'm not sure she _gets_ pissed. She's supposed to be some kind of hippie. I don't think hippies get mad. So...I guess we're just supposed to sit and talk." A pause. Then, "I don't like this. I do very well with structure."

"Yeah, same here," Unidentified Boy Number One said, getting up and walking to his backpack.

"Where are _you_ going?" Freddy asked sharply. "She said we could talk, I don't think she means we can _leave_."

"I'm not _leaving_," UBNO said, rolling his eyes. "I'm getting real pants. No zippers my ass, I look ridiculous in sweatpants." And with that, he removed a pair of jeans from his backpack and walked off to a nearby closet, ostensibly to change into them.

"Well, don't take too long coming out of the closet, Armand _darling_," Freddy said languidly, lying back on the ground, folding his hands behind his head and smiling as he heard Armand, formerly Unidentified Boy Number One, make some kind of irritated, muffled retort. "Seriously though, speaking of names, who names their kid 'Armand' and then expects him to be straight? It's a lot of pressure to put on a little gay infant."

This time, everyone did laugh at that, though Erik's was remarkably short-lived and he cut off everyone else's mirth by fixing his uniquely piercing gaze on Raoul and asking the question on everyone's mind, "Not to be rude or anything, but who exactly _are _you and why are you here?"


	18. Another Hundred People

AN: Quick update, since this is really just one chapter, though I more or less split it between Christine and Erik's perspectives. Erik is both remarkably easy and remarkably difficult to translate to paper, he certainly has a lot to say, but a lot of it is just nonsense. Of course, sometimes he's not even certain that he's making sense when he _wants_ to make sense.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright. Also, Apples to Apples? Greatest game EVER.

* * *

_Another hundred people just got off of the train  
And came up through the ground,  
__While another hundred people just got off of the bus  
And are looking around  
At another hundred people who got off of the plane  
And are looking at us  
Who got off of the train  
And the plane and the bus  
Maybe yesterday._

It's a city of strangers,  
Some come to work, some to play.  
A city of strangers,  
Some come to stare, some to stay.

_-Company_

Raoul looked a little surprised at how forward and...slightly rude the question was. "Uh, well, I'm...Raoul. Like I said," he replied, smiling that little awkward smile at Erik who was utterly unmoved.

"Well, thus far all your identity consists of is _not _being a gay porn star, you'll forgive me if I remain curious. There are many other occupations in the world beyond the pornography industry." Ahmed did shoot Erik a sideways look on that one, the one he often gave his friend that meant, 'Dude, cool it,' but Erik had eyes for Raoul only at the moment.

The blonde haired new kid looked very much taken aback, but still smiled awkwardly and said, "Well...I'm not a porn star – I don't have a job, actually, so I guess I'm not anything. Um. I mean, I'm an actor...well, I _act_, I don't want to say _actor_, since it's not like I get paid for it. I did plays in high school and stuff and now I want to do it for...for a career." Though Raoul looked as though he ought to project an air of confidence – perhaps arrogance, given how pretty he was, he certainly seemed like an uncertain little cub scout. Christine pitied him, a little, and rather wished that Ahmed would just elbow Erik in the ribs and tell him to knock it off – though _what _ he was trying to do escaped her entirely. He was being really...mean. And not the sort of fun mean that he was with his friends, he was being _mean _mean, especially considering the fact that he didn't know Raoul at all and that was just...mean.

Christine didn't have a terribly extensive vocabulary.

"Hmm," was Erik's noncommittal response. Leaning forward a bit aggressively, he stared Raoul down until the other boy felt so uncomfortable that he lowered his gaze to the floor. It was a display of macho posturing that no one in the room would ever expect from Erik or even think that he was capable of. He was just so...blasé about everything, so been-there, done-that with the world, it was rare to see him get this riled, especially over some kid in his class that he'd never seen before. Erik got worked up over fireworks. Not...blonde boys in rugby shirts.

Except, this wasn't really about the blonde boy in the rugby shirt – well, it _was_, but not because he was a blonde boy in a rugby shirt. He could have been a redheaded boy in a tank top or a Mexican boy without a shirt at all, it didn't matter. What did matter was that he was _here_ and Erik had not been _informed_. It was actually _exactly_ like the situation with the fireworks, only this was slightly more important than cheap explosives sitting in Ahmed's cargo hold.

Abruptly, Erik rose from the floor and made his way to the door. "Oh, not you too," Freddy groaned. "Honestly, you're going to get us all in trouble. She said _talk_, not _walk_, sweetie, so don't you think - "

"This will be brief," Erik cut in. "If she gets back before I do, just tell her I went to the bathroom." The room was silent for a long while after Erik slammed the door behind him.

Unacceptable. _Unacceptable_. Why was he uninformed? Why didn't anyone _tell _him anything anymore? Did they not trust him? That had to be it. No one trusted him. God, he knew more about what went on around the theatre and the school when he was ten years old than he did now. And why? Because he was crazier now than he was when he was ten? Not true. Absolutely not true, he was on his medication now, he was _much _better off than he was when he was twelve and Tim knew that, the bastard, so what, did he think his job security was in question? Laugh and a half, when you wrote your own paychecks, you're pretty much set for life. And what was he going to do anyway? Nothing. He wasn't _anything_ in this theatre, didn't have any power at all, who cared that he would do whatever they asked at the drop of a hat? Loyalty didn't count for anything, did it? Nope. Not a fucking thing. Well, fuck them.

Ignoring all the odd looks he got walking down the hallway with blue murder in his eyes, Erik walked up to Tim's office door with a singularity of purpose that would have surprised anyone acquainted with his more ADD tendencies. It would be simple. Find Tim and ask him who the _hell_ this Raoul Chaney was and _why_ he had not been told that this Raoul Chaney would be coming to _his_ theatre.

Well, it would have been simple if Tim had been in his office when Erik came calling. As it was, he was out. And he didn't pick up his phone when Erik called. Bastard. He must have known this was coming. Undeterred, Erik did what he did best when someone pissed him off without reason and then was not immediately available to feel his wrath: he wrote an angry letter that he had absolutely no intention of sending.

Settling in behind Tim's desk, Erik pulled out a sheet of university stationary and grabbed the first pen he saw – the red Pilot pen that Tim used for grading. Pilot pens were the best pens ever, naturally, lovely and inky and slightly too expensive to be used for writing pointless letters of anger, but Erik was beyond caring about price at this point.

**What the fuck? Who the hell is Raoul and why wasn't I told that he would be joining the class? You said at the beginning of the summer that all enrollment spaces had been filled. What, I'm not important enough to know who I'm going to be seeing day in and day out for the next four years? You thought my mental state wasn't stable enough to bear the load of this kind of information? Well, you were quite mistaken, Mr. Reyer, very much mistaken. I mean, really, wouldn't common sense dictate that I should be informed of a disruption to my routine? That telling me would be easier in the long-run than just plopping this new person into my life and saying, 'Oh, go ahead, make friends?' Well, congratulations, Tim, your infamous people skills have utterly failed you. I am not happy.**

Once he completed the letter, Erik stared at it for a long moment before tearing it into little pieces, putting those pieces in the paper shredder and then threw the whole thing in the garbage can. Upon further reflection, he dumped the contents of the trash can out of Tim's office window, watching with a sense of detached satisfaction as the wind took the pieces and spread them over the campus.

The first letter of this nature Erik had written had been in red crayon on a piece of black construction paper. It was a suicide note. He was in fifth grade. His teachers hadn't had an easy time reading what he had written (red crayon and black paper were not a good combination), but they recognized it as a warning sign for dark things to come and called his parents. The letter contained a litany of complaints, some of them directed against his mother and father, moreso his mother because she was home more often than his father that year. Madeline actually demonstrated remarkable restraint that day, she didn't cry, she didn't scream, she didn't swear. When she got the call from the school that Erik was 'unwell' and needed to come home, she picked him up and was de-briefed by the school nurse who was better schooled in treating split lips and loose teeth than suicidal ten-year-olds.

Madeline didn't say anything on the car ride home, Erik kept glancing to the left, expecting her to snap at him any second. Nor did she say anything when she walked up the front steps and led them both into the house. And even when she sat down on the couch beside him, she didn't say anything; she just hugged him for a long, long time. Then said, very seriously, that the next time he wanted to write a letter to the world because he was feeling bad to take a second look at it before he sent it or left it lying around somewhere and _really_ think about whether he meant what he was saying or whether it was just because he was mad and would get over it.

Erik took her words to heart and could not remember the last time he wrote an angry letter to someone and actually sent it. The letter to the futon people didn't count. That was righteous indignation, not anger, it was a collaboration and they posted it on craigslist, people posted _crazy_ shit on craigslist and no one took them seriously. Of course, his mother also signed him up for therapy that year and that helped a bit. True, he hadn't called his therapist for a session in about four months, but since he was still throwing away his badly-worded crazy letters, he figured he was okay without David's counsel.

Thoroughly calm now, Erik looked impassively at his cell phone which was buzzing away on Tim's desk. "Hey Tim," he said when he answered, it wasn't necessary to even check the caller ID.

"_Hey,"_ Tim's voice sounded vague and far-away in a manner that indicated he was standing in the main stage theatre at Memorial. The land where cell phone reception went to die. _"What's up? Shouldn't you be in class?"_

"Technically," Erik shrugged, running his free hand through his hair. "I think Eileen is re-aligning her chakras or something - "

"_She forgot the syllabus again, didn't she?"_ Tim groaned, likely running a hand through his own pale, thinning hair.

"Most probably. Speaking of forgetting, who is Raoul?"

A pause. _"Raoul? He's the fifth boy. I was telling you at the Tony party, I found the fifth boy. He had to audition separately, he was...in France or abroad or something when the in-person auditions were conducted, but I found his tape intriguing enough to make an exception. Don't you remember?"_

Uh...no. No, Erik did not remember that conversation at _all_, but to be fair, the majority of the night had been a bit of a blur. Huh. Overreaction. Well, it wasn't as though he had never done such a thing in the past. Actually, his overreactions were things of legend amongst his friends. "Oh yeah," he said vaguely, after a telling pause. "Um. Great. Just wondering. Thanks Tim, I'll see you later."

"_See you this afternoon_._"_ Tim replied, but there was a bit of a wary note that meant they would probably be talking about this later. Tim was the sort of parent who knew how to prioritize. You might be in a lot of trouble for something, but think you've gotten off the hook...no such luck. You will feel his ire eventually, he just decided that punishment on the spot was inappropriate. Unlike Maddy who liked to punish the moment the offense was committed. Different strokes for different folks, but really, with the different influences on his childhood, it was a miracle Erik didn't have Multiple Personality Disorder in addition to all the crap he _did_ have.

Then again, some might argue with that assessment. For all outward appearances, the Erik who had been giving Raoul the third degree and the one who reappeared, whistling and light-hearted fifteen minutes after he slammed the door. "So, Raoul, what got you into theatre?" Erik asked, taking up his position on the floor as if he really _had_ just taken off on an innocent pee break.

Raoul was as startled by Erik's sudden about-face as anyone faced with such behavior might be, but it was to his credit that he just smiled his nervous smile and said, "Well, I was just saying to everyone that I didn't really do any theatre when I was little – I mean, it's so cool that you guys did, that's wild – but I was...I was Joseph in the Christmas pageant when I was in second grade and then in eighth grade we did the Passion in play-form and I was Jesus and I thought that acting was cool, so I tried out for _Oedipus Rex_ in high school and I was in the chorus and then...um, I was in other stuff."

Well, he was able to string simple sentences together. That was something, even though Erik was fairly positive that this shiny new toy of theirs could not actually spell 'Oedipus' nor would he know what the name meant. He did. That meant he was better than Raoul in all the ways that counted.

So he had some self-esteem issues. So sue him. "_Oedipus _is a good show," Freddy said, flashing Raoul a bright grin with a mouth full of handsome teeth that had been covered in braces only six months prior to this meeting. Erik was not sure whether or not Freddy's efforts at flirting were paying off at all. His gaydar was fairly accurate most of the time, but he wasn't getting any particularly strong _pings_ from Raoul. Then again, there was nothing in his build, countenance or voice to indicate that he was straight either.

"I liked it a lot," Raoul nodded, smiling back at Freddy...not particularly flirtatiously, yeah, maybe he was just a really friendly human being. Erik did not like friendly people. Christine was an exception. After a few days of knowing her, Erik surmised that she was not actually friendly, she was just often confused and found that smiling was a good defense against awkward moments. "So...you guys all know each other?"

Christine chose that moment to pipe up with an overly eager, "Oh no! I mean, I know _mostly_ everybody, but not _everybody_. Um. But everyone else knows everybody."

Oh, his poor Christine. Capable of stringing sentences together, but often her own insecurity prevented her from doing so successfully. Erik was willing to grant her a reprieve from his judgment because he thought she wasn't stupid as much as she was uncertain. Raoul...he was fairly positive that Raoul was just stupid. No one else seemed to find that fact as unsettling as he did.

"I'm Jamie!" That particularly perky voice did indeed belong to Jamie Josephine St. James (her parents were evil, ask anyone), a blandly pretty girl of average height who sought to shake up her rather generic appearance by dying her mousy brown hair purple in middle school. Now it was long, shiny and jet black with hints of blue tinting throughout. Erik thought it was a bit ridiculous for her.

Other young women of her age could pull the hair off and if Jamie just kept her mouth shut she could probably manage just as well, but that was a hairstyle more befitting a wrathful young lady who belonged to one or more obscure subcultures who listened to Norwegian Death Metal in old record stores. Jamie listened to 80s pop music, bought all of her clothes at JC Penney and had a perpetually optimistic outlook on life. Also she was obsessed with all things related to the Disney corporation. Hardly the underground spooky kid her hair proclaimed her to be. Still, she was a decent singer and prolific dancer, so Erik had no objection to her being there.

Sorelli waved boredly from the seat she'd taken against the wall; it seemed that her nails had chipped beyond a fashionably acceptable level and she was removing the polish. "I'm Sarah, but just call me Sorelli, everyone else does."

"Oh, hey!" Christine piped up, grinning hugely at the other girl. "I'm Christine, I'm your room mate who isn't Meg, I was beginning to think I'd never see you!"

Suddenly, Sorelli dropped her aloof movie star persona and hopped off her chair to sit down next to Christine. "Oh, _hi! _Oh my god, I wanted to wait up for you, but I was _so _tired and that doesn't matter, we'll totally hang out, do you play Apples to Apples at all?" she happily peppered Christine with questions, acting every inch the excitable teenage girl she was in her heart. Sorelli had many personalities that might rear they heads at any moment: aloof movie star, sophisticated socialite, jaded vamp...she _was_ none of these things, but Erik suspected dissatisfaction with an otherwise boring life was what led her choose a career on the stage.

There was a time when he spent an hour a week with his therapist, he picked up some psycho-analytical skills along the way. Sorelli, unlike Jamie, kept her hair natural, long dark brown and faintly wavy. Right now she was wearing sweats and a tank top, but she kept up on fashions and tried to wear whatever the people on _Gossip Girl_ were clothed in. It was amusing to see her beside Christine, who though very attractive, was short, blonde and pixie-like. Sorelli was tall and slender, but somehow managed to develop a pair of substantial breasts which attracted much male attention in their teenage years. Male attention that she responded to somewhat too frequently. At least the way Charlotte told it.

Everyone else was very friendly, gave Raoul their name, rank and serial numbers, all very nicely...and then it was Erik's turn. All eyes fell on him and he could practically feel Ahmed burning twin holes into the back of his neck with the force of his gaze. God, what was so terribly interesting? It wasn't like he was going to _attack_ the kid or anything. Rip off his head and rip his spleen from his still-bleeding neck stump. No. Why would anyone ever think he was going to do something like that? "I'm Erik," he shrugged, looking up as Eileen breezed into the room, syllabi in hand. "That's really there is to say about me."


	19. What's the Buzz?

AN: Just a quickie update with a dearth of humor, sorry about that, Ahmed and Erik are moody little bitches, no two ways about it. Still, after Erik ran around like a demented chicken with his head cut off, I think a little investigation is justified.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright. However, I am totally plugging Rufus Wainwright as an artist, unashamedly.

_

* * *

What's the buzz?  
Tell me what's a-happening.  
What's the buzz?  
Tell me what's a-happening.  
What's the buzz?  
Tell me what's a-happening._

_Why should you want to know?  
Don't you mind about the future.  
Don't you try to think ahead.  
Save tomorrow for tomorrow.  
Think about today instead._

_-Jesus Christ Superstar_

It wasn't that Ahmed was a snoop. He wasn't – seriously wasn't. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he could have died peacefully never knowing a third of the crap he did know about his friends'. Somehow, through absolutely no fault of his own, he was more than a little acquainted with absolutely _everyone's _day to day drama. Sorelli's last pregnancy scare, Jamie's latest car accident, Freddy's well-concealed residual Catholic angst over his sexual orientation, yes, he knew it all and that was just a sample of pond scum in the murky lake of his friends' personal lives. Pond scum that he had to wade through daily and for some unknown reason, his brain didn't have those hip-high rubber boots that people who worked in cranberry bogs wore during harvest time, so all that scum was just piling up and clinging to his jeans and getting his legs all slimy...okay, that was abuse of a metaphor.

Of course, the Loch Ness monster of all things categorized in Ahmed's water world of a brain under Unnecessary Knowledge had to do with Erik. In addition acting as a living sounding board for his friend's frustrations since the two of them had entered Kindergarten, he had incidentally been there for all the things that Erik did _not _want anyone to know about him. Ahmed probably knew his friend's medical history better than Madeline, _maybe _even Charlie did. Not because they were neglectful parents (though that was a topic that could be deliberated until man colonized space), but through nothing more active than being around Erik more than his parents were, he knew the warning signs, knew when Erik's cup of wackiness was overflowing and turning into something potentially dangerous.

But in all honesty, he wasn't a snoop. Not in the classic vein of Great Snoops of History. He didn't go digging for this stuff after all, people just _told_ him and he did have _eyes_, some things were just entirely too obvious to be ignored. That little stunt that Erik pulled with newbie!Raoul earlier, for example. Obvious. As obvious as if Erik had worn a t-shirt with red letters on it that declared in bold print, 'I AM OFF MY MEDS TODAY.' So, in an attempt to be a good friend – _not_ a snoop – he arranged it so that Freddy drove the bulk of the class up to Memorial for their afternoon acting class in his van, while he drove up with Erik alone in Freddy's car. It wasn't technically kosher for them to be doing this, given that neither of them were on the other's insurance, but Herbert the Love Bus was a tank and...well, Ahmed was a very good driver, by Rhode Island standards. Or incredibly lucky. He'd never even been pulled over and he was one of those who considered stop signs and yield signs to be interchangeable.

This brilliant plan to have a heart-to-heart with Erik seemed doomed to failure from the start. Understandable, considering that, as well as Ahmed knew Erik, Erik was equally as well-acquainted with Ahmed's little personal quirks and when he insisted on their being alone together the intended result was often A Talk. Talk with a capital 'T,' naturally, because Ahmed fancied himself something of an amateur detective cum therapist cum Grand Inquisitor. It was really _too _obvious, 'Oh, here, Freddy, take my relic of an automobile and _bond_ with our classmates. Erik! We're going to go in Freddy's car! Why? Um...' Yeah. Subtle he was not.

Therefore, Erik did what it was in his nature to do: sabotage all of Ahmed's attempts to force them into an awkward conversation about his behavior that morning. That was what this foolishness was about, after all, his acting like an utter spaz that morning. While they went over verb tenses in his Latin class, Erik had permitted himself to tune out and admitted to himself that his actions had been uncalled for, over the top and completely illogical. Reflecting back on it, he didn't even know _why _he had been so upset over Raoul. It wasn't like Tim was _obligated_ to tell him about the student roster, it wasn't like Raoul was a _threat_ to his position at Memorial, they weren't even going to be competing for the same _roles_ for fuck's sake, so why was he practically peeing himself with rage over the slightly slow blondie bear in the striped shirt?

To tell the truth, Erik didn't know. And that was more than a little scary.

And because his own actions made him nervous, Erik decided that he did not want to talk about it. So, rather than talking about it, he made a lot of noise going through the collection of CDs that were spread haphazardly about Freddy's backseat, finally settling on Rufus Wainwright's _Release the Stars_, hoping that the excessive timpani would discourage all of Ahmed's attempts at making serious conversation.

They weren't even halfway through the first track when it came up.

"So, what the fuck happened this morning?"

Damn him. Perhaps he ought to have gone for the Carnegie Hall album instead.

"You know, I'm not sure," Erik deflected effortlessly. "I mean, I was kind of going along with her up through the roof, but once we started leaving gifts for the tree, I zoned out a bit. How about you? Were you faced with an oak, elm or birch?"

Rolling his eyes in that infuriating Ahmed way that _so_ clearly read as 'stop wasting my time, please,' he sighed a bit as he sped up on the on-ramp. "With Raoul, dumbass, please stop pretending that you don't know what I'm talking about."

Erik sank back into the seat uncomfortably, knees squashed up against the dashboard as they were in _every_ vehicle he attempted to slouch in. "Damn compact cars," he muttered under his breath, squinting into the sunlight out of the window. Did he pack sunscreen? Whatever, he'd be fine, he was sure. "I don't know," Erik admitted finally, though he made damn sure that he didn't look at Ahmed as he spoke. "I wasn't expecting him."

"And...so, what, you decided to run away and write one of those stupid letters you don't send?"

"Don't mock my coping mechanisms."

"Erik, you shouldn't – no, fuck YOU, dude!" The latter was shouted out the open window to a man in a green sedan determined not to let them into the passing lane. "Erik," he began again after they had merged and he had calmed down. "The point is, you shouldn't _need_ a coping mechanism to meet new people."

"Well, I _do_," Erik said to the cars they passed on his side of the car. "So just drop it, alright? I'm fine now. Cool as a cucumber, cool as a fucking cucumber, so _drop it_, Ahmed, seriously." Idly the thought flashed through his mind that he'd rather be ejected from the car at 75 miles an hour than continue having this conversation. As a precaution, Erik locked the car door, just so he would have that millisecond of unlocking the door before he tried to make that passing through a reality. Another coping mechanism. That he shouldn't need for having a slightly awkward conversation with his best friend. _God dammit, Ahmed, why do you_ _always have to be right? Every fucking time. Just give me a break now and then, okay? _

Oh well. Even if Ahmed did have a freakish amount of insight into Erik's mental health - more insight than Erik had, most of the time - he _still_ never managed to beat him at air hockey. It was the small victories that made life worth living. He would play air hockey with Ahmed sometime soon and kick his ass, that was plenty of reason to live and not throw himself out of the car window. Crisis resolved.

Silence reigned for a few minutes, a heavy silence of hitched breaths and sidelong looks, when you want to say something, but just...don't. For any number of reasons. Finally, Ahmed did speak, but, hearing the edge to his friend's voice and the growing stiffness of his shoulders that said, 'Don't push me,' more clearly than words could have. "So...what do you think about the album?" he asked, indicating the CD player in the dashboard.

"I like it," Erik replied immediately, his voice lighter with palpable relief. "The orchestral arrangements can be a bit overpowering in sections. I wish it had been released as a two-CD set, just voice and piano as he originally intended, but I don't really have a problem with it as it is now. At least he's _trying_, which is more than I can say for a lot of other artists now."

"Did you hear anything about his opera?"

"No, I keep meaning to download it somewhere, but it constantly slips my mind..."

See? Ahmed wasn't nosy. Just concerned. Anyway, he didn't have the finesse to wheedle secrets out of anyone, so clearly he wouldn't be very good at being nosy even if he was. Which he most decidedly was not.


	20. Show People

AN: A plot is slowly forming out of this rag-tag bunch and it only took us 20 chapters to get there! Yay progress! Here we get some ominous (or very NOT ominous foreshadowing) and some boring business chat that is happily interrupted by Sorelli's hyperbolic tendencies. I'm quite pleased with this chapter, I wrote it in two chunks, the theatre superstition section first and the actual walking into Memorial from Christine's perspective second. This is kind of a homey chapter for me, Memorial is based on an idealized combination of the Providence Performing Arts Center and Trinity Repertory Company, two great theatres in Providence. And they're all drinking Del's, you don't get much more Rhody-centric than that. Crawford Nightingale doesn't have anything named after him in Providence as far as I know, but he was a real person, a reverand who died in Providence in the late 19th century, he was run over by a street car...I just thought he had a good name, so I borrowed it.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright. Del's? Is delicious in a way that defies description. I only drink lemon, myself, but most of my friends prefer the pinker flavors.

* * *

_We're a special kind of people known as show people  
We live in a world of our own  
Our days are tied to curtains  
They rise and they fall  
We're born every night  
At Half-hour call  
We can't picture being anything but show people  
Civilians find the whole thing quite bizarre  
But that hop in our hearts  
When the overture starts  
Helps us know how lucky we are!_

_-Curtains_

If Christine thought the Fine Arts Center at St Mary's was beautiful the first time she saw it, that was _nothing_ compared to how she felt about Crawford Nightingale Memorial Repertory Theatre (Memorial Rep, or, Memorial to insiders or people who didn't feel like wasting breath on superfluous words). It was a turn of the century movie theatre that was turned into a live theatre back in the 1960s by a group of enterprising young artists. For years it was sort of a renegade underground project, struggling to pay the bills, but that all changed in the 1980s when they got a _huge_ endowment from some old eccentric billionaire who liked a production of _Hedda Gabler_ he saw there. Tim had taken over as Artistic Director in the early 90s and business had been booming ever since.

The building itself was just beautiful, located in downtown Providence with a massive marble Greco-Roman fa_ç_ade complete with columns, carved with flowers. Evidently the flowers were encrusted with jewels at one point, but those had been ripped off the building when it fell into disrepair in the 50s, the holes had been patched with colorful clay pieces so that they were now small floral mosaics. The lobby was bronzed, gilded and silvered to within an inch of its life. During a mid-seventies restoration effort, the moldy carpets had been pulled up to reveal shining hardwood floors that were now so highly polished that the students could see their reflections if they looked closely enough. It was just gorgeous, like walking into a glitzy place that ought to have faded into memory ages ago. The high ceiling of the lobby was divided into segments by great wooden arches and each of those segments had been painted with various Greek gods, goddesses and muses acting out scenes from mythology. _Those_ had only been exposed during a _really_ expensive renovation project in the late 90s that practically left the theatre bankrupt. Tim had been forced to put on a season of family favorites, (_Oliver! _and _Annie_ all in one year, the actors threatened to mutiny) in order to raise the funds necessary to keep operations running smoothly.

Inside the auditorium of the main proscenium stage, things only got prettier. There were two sets of three opera boxes raised on either side of the stage, though curtains had been drawn in front of the seats, so Christine didn't get a good look inside of them. In addition to six sections of orchestra seats that went twenty-six rows deep – all the seats comfortably upholstered in red velvety fabric, as well as a balcony level. Glittering beautifully over the seats was an absolutely massive chandelier, unlit at the moment so that it was a shadowed and mysterious specter, looking down at them with dozens of dark, electric eyes.

"Whoa," was the phrase Christine employed to express her all-encompassing awe at stepping into such a majestic cathedral to the arts. God, her heart beat faster just _being_ in a theatre like this, a place where she felt her acting would be augmented due to the sheer splendor of the place. No one could suck when they were surrounded by so many shiny things, it made her giddy to think about it. By contrast, no one else seemed to notice or care about the ornaments surrounding them. Freddy had ducked into a restroom right after they arrived, Charlotte and Sorelli were talking about the latest episode of _Project Runway_, Meg was on the phone with her mom, Jamie and Armand were texting furiously – Armand was apparently trying to get a hold of Ahmed and Erik who hadn't arrived when the rest of them had. Oh! Well, she wasn't totally alone in being blown away. Raoul was staring up at the ceiling, much as she had been, though he looked more nervous than excited.

Nudging Christine, he gestured up at the chandelier and asked, "Um...you think that's screwed in alright?"

Giving him what she hoped was a confident grin, Christine giggled a little and said, "Uh, yeah, I don't think they'd mess around with something like that. It's _beautiful_ here, isn't it?"

Raoul returned her grin with a shy one of his own and said, "Yeah, it's great. I just...worry about getting my head smashed in, you know? I mean, it's pretty, but _big_ and stuff like that happens all the time." Or so he'd heard. And he was going to recount to Christine the tale of a deadly chandelier that a friend of his mom's hairdresser had told her...when Armand was suddenly shouting into his phone at what seemed to be an unreasonable volume for a private conversation.

"WHAT?" he yelled, holding the phone so closely against his head that it wouldn't be surprising if it merged into his face. "No! I can't hear you, that's why I _TEXTED,_ dumbass, I'm in the audi – you parked _where?!_ Why? No, we parked in the _PARKING LOT – _what? You're where? _WHERE?_ _WHAT?_ Oh. Okay. Yeah. See you." Flipping the phone shut, he looked up at his classmates, all of whom where staring at him with great interest since their individual conversations were drowned out by the cell phone stylings of Armand Moncharmin. "They stopped for Del's. They'll be here in a bit."

Charlotte looked scandalized. "They stopped for Del's and you didn't tell them to bring me some?" she asked, clearly horrified at the oversight.

Armand shrugged...then spoke, effectively ending his four months of near silence where addressing Se_ñ_orita Mendoza directly was concerend. "You can call them back, if you want, they're in Kennedy Plaza, they'll be here in ten minutes. Erik had a lemon craving or something."

"As if," Charlotte snorted, removing a hair claw from her purse and getting her hair out of her face. "I don't even turn my phone on in here, the ghost drains my batteries." She didn't show it, but she was absolutely rattled to the core that Armand had spoken to her. Charlotte being Charlotte, she couldn't just _apologize_ to him about the prom thing, say a quick, 'Hey, sorry I made you so uncomfortable and threatened our friendship!' She couldn't just admit that she'd been _wrong_ about something, it wasn't in her nature, she was a Sagittarius, Sags never backed down. But it had been _months_ and she half-thought it would be _forever_ and it just _killed_ her that one of her best friends _hated_ her just because she wanted him to be happy. Was that wrong? No, it wasn't wrong and Charlotte would never apologize for trying to make someone happy. As luck would have it, this one time, she didn't have to.

"Ghost?" Christine asked, startled and unaware of Charlotte's inner monologue. "What gho - "

But she was cut off by a booming voice center stage that made her jump a mile. "Greetings, actors! Just take a seat kids and we'll get started." The speaker was no ghost, but Tim, wearing dark jeans, one of his classic pinstripe shirts, a sweater vest and one of his ever-present ties. None of the children looked closely enough to notice, but the artistic director was a little pale and there were dark circles under his eyes. Luckily, the bright work lights washed him out entirely and hid all signs of fatigue remarkably well.

Everyone filed into the first two rows of seats, just behind the orchestra pit and looked up at Tim, standing straight and tall on the stage he had crossed hundreds, if not thousands of times in his life. His voice was a rich tenor sound that easily carried throughout the entire auditorium without the aid of a mic and Christine felt a sudden rush of respect for him. Had Erik ever mentioned whether or not Tim acted before taking over as the theatre's main director? She couldn't be certain, but it seemed like he must have. She would have to ask him later, at the moment he was frowning and conducting a very quick head-count.

"And Ahmed and Erik are...?" he asked pointedly, staring at them over the tops of his wire-rim spectacles.

"Getting lemonade," was the response from two or three of the kids.

Tim sighed impressively. "Of course they are. Alright guys, I guess we'll just start without them, they know most of the introductory facts already. For those of you who _don't _know, my name is Timothy Reyer-Goldman, I'm the artistic director here at Memorial. For this semester, I'll be your acting professor...next semester remains to be seen, but let's focus on the present...this is ridiculously removed, hang on a moment." Adjusting the black messenger bag that hung over his shoulder, (which Tim maintained was _not_ a manpurse since he bought it on sale at Macy's two years ago), he walked down the temporary steps at the front of the stage and sat on the edge of the staircase, now on the same level as his students.

"Better. Alright, you can call me Tim, there's no need for 'Professor' or 'Mr' Reyer-Goldman, any of that nonsense. We put on four main stage productions here at Memorial a season, two musicals, and at least two shows in our black box upstairs, you will be performing in _both_ spaces within the year if you have the dedication to do so, I already know you all have the required talent, otherwise you wouldn't be here. This theatre seats seven hundred and fifty people, including the boxes which can seat up to twelve - according to the fire department. The black box can seat between one hundred and fifty to two hundred, depending on the organization of the seats and the stage. It's a more intimate environment, but it presents its own challenges. The main auditorium, though it's much larger and more conventional is also challenging in its own way. You may have noticed that this space is _enormous_, but the acoustics here are terrible, I won't sugar-coat it for you. And just to warn you, we hate to rely on microphones here unless we're doing a musical because, the building is old, we don't want to have th audience straining to hear you if a mic cuts out.

"I trust each and every one of you reported to Eileen this morning for voice and movement?" There was mutual nodding. "Good. That is going to be one of your most important class you'll take in your four years here, more important than acting class in many ways. Many people can _act_, but it takes a special class of person to perform in live theatre. Professional actors can be called upon to do eight performances a week and if you're in a musical, you're not only acting, you are singing and dancing as well and that doesn't require talent alone, it requires _stamina._ Consider this, if one of you young ladies is cast as Portia in _The Merchant of Venice _and you are performing in a theatre of this size, you have to make absolutely certain that five hundred and eighty-eight lines of dialogue are heard clearly by all seven-hundred and fifty people attending any given performance."

Christine considered that, gave the massive auditorium another look around and felt a bit of those nerves that Raoul had been suffering from earlier surge within her. _Five hundred eighty-eight lines_, she thought. _And I don't even understand most of what goes on in _Romeo and Juliet_. I might be screwed._ But whether she was screwed or not became irrelevant when the auditorium doors flew open and Erik's voice resounded beautifully and audibly off of those sound-sucking walls with a cheerful, "Who wants Del's?"

Incredibly, Tim smiled at his tardy students who came through with white and green striped cups balanced before them on gray trays. "That's another thing you should know. You're allowed to be late for my class without suffering damage to your GPA...however, you must bring snacks for the entire group."

There were a few moments of shuffling and happy thank yous as people got their lemonade. Christine was surprised to see that Erik and Ahmed brought a variety: plain lemon for some, but cherry for Meg and Sorrelli, while Tim graciously accepted a watermelon. "I didn't know which you would prefer, Christine," Erik said, semi-apologetically. "But I assumed you couldn't go wrong with lemon."

Indeed, he could not and Christine beamed up at him when he handed her the delicious frozen treat. It was cold and a little melted from being carried in the warm September sun. Christine had never had a frozen lemonade before and was finding her first experience with it more than satisfactory. "It's great, Erik, thanks guys!" she said enthusiastically, glancing up at the stage when a musical tinkling from Tim's pocket caused him to set down his drink and frown at the phone.

"Shit," he said and Christine felt faintly giddy at hearing a teacher swear in front of her. College was so cool! "Hang tight, chickadees, I've got to take this call. Erik, pass out the syllabus, it's in my bag. I trust that you're all literate and don't need me to read it out to you. If this takes a while...talk about your summer vacations." And with that he was gone, jogging across the stage.

"So, if _all_ the teachers here just take off at the beginning of class, I've got to say, I'm completely okay with it," Raoul said, slurping his lemonade greedily. Like most college kids, it appeared that he hadn't treated himself to breakfast _or_ lunch that day. Armand rolled his eyes and warmed his lemonade in his hands, he preferred his Del's very melted before he took the first sip.

"It's always like this when the season's just getting started. They're doing _Three Days of Rain_ for the first show upstairs and that's got, like three people, it's already cast. So, that's not a problem, but Tim's been trying to get the rights to _Les Mis_ forever, so he might be swapping that out at the end of the year...but I don't know, that's a rumor, don't get excited." Armand's dark brown eyes flickered up to Erik, who was mid-sip, in addition to handing out papers, so he could only shrug in response for a moment.

"I don't know any more than you do about that," he said, entirely calm after his earlier freak-out regarding being uninformed. "He _wants_ to do it, we'll see what happens."

Armand shook his head. "I'm sorry. I don't think we need to go changing the season in September. All the advertising is out, people are expecting us to do _Urinetown_."

"Yeah, but _Les Mis _will draw a big crowd," Freddy pointed out. "And get in lots of money. Aren't we still paying off the ceiling in the lobby?"

"More or less," Ahmed said, downing the last of his lemonade in one gulp. "But I think that if we _can _do it, we _should_ do it."

"We _could_ do it next year," Armand pointed out reasonably.

"Yeah, but we want to be the first in the state to launch a professional production," Charlotte chimed in. "That's _great_ publicity, little repertory company takes on big, bad Broadway giant. And not the shitty junior version that everyone does, the real version, people would pay really well for that. And, most important point of _all_, I could play a whore. A singing, dancing, French whore, I think it's a great idea. And then, when we make a million dollars on _Les Mis_, we can stop renting out the theatre to _other _ people.

Taking note of the confused expressions on Raoul and Christine's faces as they sought to follow this very insiders-only conversation, Freddy (in his infinite compassion) decided to explain. "We rent the theatre out in the summer for traveling troupes or kids who graduated from Brown who have money for their own theatre company, but not enough money for their own theatre. They do _weird_ stuff, all avante garde, but...just not in a good way. We saw the worst _ever _production of _Macbeth _last summer, like, it was some kind of weird semi-modernization thing with Nazis and - "

A piercing scream startled Freddy out of his monologue and everyone's heads snapped around to look at Sorelli who just shrieked as though she was being tortured. With the look of one half-mad, she stood up and pointed a trembling hand at her fair-haired friend and whispered fearfully, "_Out_. Fucking _out_. Right now."

For his part, Freddy was all confusion. "What?" he asked, looking around nervously. "What did I do? It _was _a bad production, honey. I know you thought Banquo was cute, but I saw him after and he had _really_ bad acne - "

"Out!" Sorelli bellowed angrily, pointing this time to one of the clearly marked exits at the front of the auditorium. "You said it. _Out._"

Then Freddy realized exactly what the problem was. "Oh, _fuck,_" he replied with horror to match Sorelli's, though his was directed less at his offense of moments ago and more at the task he had to perform. Sighing, he stood up, careful to climb over the row of seats in front of him so that he would risk accidentally brushing against the agitated dancer who, even as he passed by, crossed her fingers in front of her face and hissed, "_Unclean_."

No one said a word. They just watched solemnly as Freddy walked the walk of shame and exited the theatre, head bowed slightly, all silently grateful that they had not made his mistake and were not forced to cleanse themselves according to custom.

Okay, not _everyone_ had that thought. Charlotte watched Freddy go, but rolled her eyes at Sorelli's supersitions, clearly an attempt to get everyone to pay attention to her. Erik and Ahmed exchanged glances and looked as though they were trying very hard not to laugh about the whole thing. And yet, they were well aware of the crime at hand. It was Raoul who found himself firmly out of the loop. Even Christine understood the infraction against the spirits of drama that had been committed. "Uh...so, do I just speak for myself here when I say...what?" Raoul asked, looking from the exit doors, to the others, to Sorelli and back again.

"Theatre rule number one," Ahmed replied, boredly. "_Never _say the name of The Scottish Play aloud in a performance space. Bad karma."

This didn't clarify matters at all for Raoul. "The Scottish Play?" he asked, utterly confused. "Oh, wait, you mean Mac-"

Fortunately, for him, a loud, "FUCK!" could be heard from out in the hallway, thus interrupting Raoul's blasphemy half way through.

"Don't say it," Erik warned him, shaking his head forbiddingly. "If you do, you have to pay the forfeit."

It was fairly obvious that Raoul was going to ask what the hell they were talking about again, so Ahmed anticipated his question and just pressed on with the explanation without being asked for it. "Different rules for different theatres, but the way we roll - "

"The way we 'roll'?" Armand sounded fairly disgusted with Ahmed's choice of phrase. "Okay, seriously, what year are you living in, 2002?"

"Fuck off," was Ahmed's cheerful reply. "Anyway, the rules here are simple. You leave the auditorium, you go into the lobby. Once you're there, you face the doors to the auditorium. Turn around three times - "

"Counterclockwise," interjected Sorelli whose large, dark eyes were still trained on the door.

"Yeah, yeah, counterclockwise. So three times around, then you have to spit, swear at the top of your lungs and get on your knees and beg the theatre gods for forgiveness. And you can't just walk back in, you need to be invited back...speaking of, Erik, get off your ass and open the door for Freddy, I'm sure he's suffered enough."

Snorting derisively, Erik shook his head, but got off his ass and did as he was bid. Frankly, he thought the whole Scottish Play thing was just a load of bullshit, a rumor that got way out of control over the last few centuries. Still, _he_ made a point never to speak the name of the show aloud, even in his day-to-day life away from the theatre. Even if it was just a stupid story...well, better safe than sorry, right?

"You spit on the floor?" Raoul asked skeptically. He couldn't be sure, but he rather suspected that his new classmates were having him on...they sort of seemed like the types to tell weird jokes like that. Honestly, what was so scary about the name of some Shakespeare play anyway? It wasn't like it was a horror story, if it was, Lady M would have turned into a zombie at the end or something...though if that _actually_ happened, he might be tempted to read more Shakespeare.

"Spit on the floor," Sorelli said ominously, though she was relaxed back into her seat again. "It's the only way."

Raoul turned to Christine, so far she seemed normal, maybe she wouldn't go along with the joke? But Christine just shrugged and nodded a little. "Yeah, I know that one, the same thing was true at my high school – but we didn't beg forgiveness, we just had to turn around, spit and swear. Oh, and yeah, you had to be let back in the room."

"But _why_?" It really didn't make sense to him, as it would not to many who were not entirely familiar with the many variables that would make an actor nervous before going on stage. There were so many people involved and so many things could go wrong during a show and that wasn't even considering the audience reaction that if not saying the name of a certain play would maybe help, then why not follow along?

"What would happens to you if you say the name?" Raoul pressed on, totally confused. "Do you, like, die or something?" And what about when they actually did the play places? Wouldn't mass deaths at some public showing of _Macbeth_ lead to newspaper articles? Or something?

Charlotte sighed, clearly already over everyone's crap and class wasn't even half over yet. "It's just a story. A superstition, there's a lot of them in theatre, we're all crazy, you should know that right now. Anyway, the story is that if you say the name of The Scottish Play out loud in a theatre either something bad will happen to you or your show will suck."

"It's an _old_ one." Erik was back, a meek looking Freddy following closely behind him. "There are some differing accounts of how it came to be. One version maintains that Shakespeare got the 'Double, double, toil and trouble' speech from _real_ witches, whatever that means, so they cursed the show. The more plausible explanation is the show got a bad reputation because failing theatre companies would often perform it to get a profit. It was – still, is really, but it _used to be_ insanely popular, you were practically guaranteed a crowd when you staged it. Still, if your company didn't make enough money off the show to remain in business, then it didn't matter. It inevitably wound up being the last show many companies produced." Shrugging elegantly, he seated himself again. "Whichever version you believe, it has a reputation for bringing bad luck."

Jamie, who had been fairly quiet for the whole affair took the opportunity to pipe up now. "It's _real,_" she insisted, eyes wide and credulous. "I'm serious, we were at a dance recital when we was nine – Sorelli and me and Meg, confirm, please – " Meg, who had been listening to a rant from her mother both before they got to the theatre _and _through Tim's opening address, took the phone away from her ear and nodded yes. "And this wasn't even a play or anything, but some of the girls were talking about theatre myths and stuff and they brought this one up."

"And our dance teacher, she was kind of a bitch," Sorelli jumped in, taking charge of the story, "she told us that it was all crap and not to buy into it. And then to prove her point, she walked to the edge of the stage and yelled it really loudly. I don't know what happened, maybe there was dust or water or something, but she tripped when she got to the edge, right after she said it and fell into the orchestra pit. She broke her arm." Looking knowingly at Raoul, she held his eyes and said, "Seriously. Don't tempt theatre ghosts, they will so fuck you up."


	21. Buenos Aires

AN: Just a fun little backstory chapter, with some more Ahmed-Erik talks. Seriously, Ahmed should just skip the theatre thing and take up a living as a psychiatrist...well, he could if he wasn't so very bad at reading people. Thanks for keeping up with the story, sometimes I worry that it drags a bit, but the charactes are really leading the way, I claim no responsibility for this story anymore!

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_What's new Buenos Aires?  
I'm new, I wanna say I'm just a little stuck on you  
You'll be on me too_

_I get out here, Buenos Aires  
Stand back, you oughta know whatcha gonna get in me  
Just a little touch of star quality_

_Fill me up with your heat, with your noise  
With your dirt, overdo me  
Let me dance to your beat, make it loud  
Let it hurt, run it through me.  
Don't hold back, you are certain to impress  
Tell the driver this is where I'm staying_

_-Evita_

Tim chose to be kind to them. Once they finished the syllabus and took a quick tour of the main stage auditorium, he let them go with another hour and a half left of the class period. He seemed slightly distracted, but whether that had anything to do with possibly obtaining the rights to _Les Mis_ was anyone's guess. Auditions for the first show of the year would be held in a week's time, more information would be pending. He didn't want to overload them the first week at school, so he encouraged them to go off and enjoy the rest of the day. No one had any real plans since they all thought they were gone to be in class for some time yet, the acting class decided to take a walk around the city, largely for the benefit of Christine and Raoul who had never spent a great deal of time in Providence.

After twenty minutes of aimless wandering and waffling about where to get food, they finally settled on going to the Starbucks on Thayer since Charlotte 'had to have' an espresso brownie. Sorelli and Jamie left then to get some important shopping done, but everyone else was keen on the coffee idea.

Erik didn't care as long as they found a place that had some actual espresso. He skipped his morning coffee that day and didn't care if they wound up at that destination for hipsters and college kids. The place was packed to the gills with the latter, since all of the Providence campuses filled up the weekend previous. Still, once lattes, espressos and mochas were ordered, they managed to find a small cluster of chairs and sofas that were recently abandoned to claim for themselves. Once situated, conversation that had lulled while standing in line started back up again. As usual, Charlotte led the charge, interrogating Raoul about his past theatrical pursuits now that she knew all she cared to about Christine's high school life.

Evidently, Raoul's parents pushed him to pursue sports in high school since he had an older brother who was some kind of track and field person and, clearly, athletic prowess was genetic, so it stood to reason that if big brother like sports, little brother would surely follow suit. Not so. "I'm really uncoordinated," Raoul said, shrugging and smiling with no small measure of embarrassment. Like, _really_ uncoordinated. I can't even swim in a straight line. But I was in choir when I was little, at my church and so I joined the chorus at school since I didn't have to do anything but sing and stand there. My dad was a little disappointed." Disappointed was an understatement. The elder Mr. Chaney actually ran his son through the verbal ringer for that. Mentioned all sorts of things about his sexuality that were fairly offensive, but none of his new classmates needed to know about that.

"Anyway, a few kids in chorus told me to try out for the musical and I did – it was _Evita_, I got casted as Che and it was a lot of fun, so I did it and here I am."

Everyone was quiet at that, though Charlotte had to bite back a smile at the idea of a blonde Che Guevara. Wow, slap on a beret and every kid thinks they can be a Marxist.

"It's cast, 'casted' isn't really a word," she corrected and then quickly asked her next question before Raoul had time to take offense. "So you're a tenor?"

Charlotte was always eager to size up the competition, even competition that wasn't necessarily her own to fight against. Freddy and Armand were going to be in a _lot _of trouble. Up until an hour ago, they had been contenders for the 'leading man' title in their little company. Regardless of acting chops, certain people fit certain roles better than others.

Life in theatre, at least if you listened to Charlotte's take on things, could often be summarized by how people fit in to _The Seagull._ She was Arkadina, no two ways about it. Erik was the Trigorin to Armand or Freddy's Treplev, Ahmed was Medvedenko, Sorelli and Jamie could fight it out for Masha and Meg and Christine could both play Nina. But now that Raoul was here? You couldn't have _three_ kids vying for the same role. This might get ugly.

"Yeah, tenor, yeah," Raoul said, nodding eagerly, as though everyone had been speaking in a foreign tongue and he finally picked out a word he understood. "Um, I started taking singing lessons junior year though, I'm kind of new to all this stuff, all the technical stuff. How...how about you?" he asked, directing his question at Erik. Perhaps he was attempting to slyly turn the tables on his inquisitor, but he honestly did sound curious. For all his faults, Erik was really good at getting the attention of everyone in the room to fall on him. He was interesting. It was a blessing and a curse.

Erik hesitated for only a brief moment before replying. "I'm a baritone," he settled on, a note of ambiguity in his voice. "A baritone who can sing tenor in an emergency situation."

"What's an emergency situation?" Given his limited experience with theatre, Raoul wasn't quite sure how there could ever be an 'emergency' aside from someone getting sick and wouldn't they have understudies for that sort of thing?

"Freddy," Erik said, glaring unashamedly at the shorter boy, who was quick to defend himself.

"Oh, come on, that's not fair."

"I've been covering for you since we were ten," Erik said, unrelenting. "It is _more _than fair."

"Okay, so we were both cast in _Oliver! _I was Oliver and Erik was the Artful Dodger, because he's taller - "

"Also because I informed my mother in no uncertain terms that if I was to audition I would not, under any circumstances, accept the role of Oliver, no way, no how."

"Yeah, because, you know, Erik at ten was really sought-after and could make demands like that," the former Oliver said, rolling his eyes to the heavens. "Anyway, I was short and cute and mop-topped so I got the part and Bitchy McBitchpants over there got the part he was angling for the whole time – though your _mom_ was Nancy, so "I'd Do Anything" took on an entirely too creepy incestuous spin. But whatever, so we're cast and all and every year Memorial does this wine and cheese gala evening, invite the sponsors, the patrons, the subscribers, for a night of really over-priced dinner theatre - "

"Which you will either be catering or performing in," Charlotte said, sizing Christine up with a knowing look. "You have been warned. Both options suck. If you're feeding people you're on your feet all night in layers of crappy polyester waiter clothes, but if you're performing, you have to wear uncomfortable shoes and _mingle_ while old guys oogle your cleavage, it sucks."

"Luckily, Christine does not have cleavage, so that won't be a problem," Freddy swiftly dodged a playful swat aimed at his shoulder by a slightly self-conscious Christine. "And this is _my _story, peanut, be quiet. Anyway, so the show is cast and I'm an adorable little urchin and Erik only a few years of puberty away from being Jack the Ripper - "

"As things should be."

"Right, my story, _hello_, pay attention to me. So, we're all set to go and I'm going to sing "Where Is Love?" at this banquet and get out of mingling because I'm but a wee babe and it would be past my bedtime when all the shenanigans were over - " Suddenly a bony hand emerged from behind Freddy's head and closed over his mouth, effectively ending the narrative.

"Your version is boring, I'm interrupting," Erik said, half-dragging Freddy into his lap to quell his squirming and indignant squeaks. "I'm not supposed to go at all. I'm supposed to go to Six Flags. I'm supposed to ride Superman: Ride of Steel. I'm in fucking _Massachusetts_ and I get a phone call from Tim, _as we're standing in line to get tickets. _This little fucker has a _tummyache_ and _someone _has to come in to sing for him. Because it would be _tragic _if there weren't any numbers from _Oliver!_ in for people to cry over as they ate their cheese – okay, ow."

Never one to let his freedom of speech be stifled, Freddy bit down hard on Erik's fingers, effecting his immediate release, though for good measure, he made no move to rise from the place he'd taken in the other fellow's lap. "Sorry, defamation of character, I'm telling the story again. I did _not _have a 'tummyache,' I had appendicitis, asshole, I was in the hospital."

"Pussy," Erik muttered, shoving Freddy off his lap and onto the floor, where he definitely belonged, both for having appendicitis and forcing him to forgo riding the steel monster of death all those years ago. "Appendicitis, tummyache, whatever, the point is, my father and I had to refund our tickets, get back in the car and then I had to run around to about seven different stores to find a suit since, you know, you're a midget and I couldn't just wear yours - "

"Excuse me, no way, I wasn't the one who was, like, 5'7 when I was _ten_, so don't get on my case, Guy Who Belongs in a Circus." Seemingly unsatisfied with that insult, Freddy turned to Erik and put on his most intense bitchface and hissed, "_Right next to the dog-faced boy_," as if those words carried with them some particular significance.

As it happened, they did. Erik's lips twitched up in a smile and he almost forgave Freddy the past injury for using such a well-placed quote. Almost. "Anyway, I'm wearing a JC Penney suit and Chester just about had kittens, since it was my father who dressed me and the man has no fashion sense whatsoever. I think I had khaki pants and a blue blazer on and, like, loafers, I looked like a background character in a John Hughes movie. But, of course, there wasn't time to change, they just threw me on stage and I had to sing this fucking song – which I _hated_, by the way and still hate to this day and it was - "

"Beautiful," Meg said smugly, always happy to get the last word it (it happened so rarely in this crowd). "I'm serious, you _have_ to watch the video Christine, it's precious. Erik's just this sad little waif-boy singing in this sweet little treble and looking _miserable_. It's hilarious, half way though you can hear the people in the crowd sniffling, they just _loved _him."

"It was child abuse," Erik concluded, leaning back against the couch with his arms folded, glaring out at that audience from so many years ago. "Child abuse. I was so pissed off at everyone and everything that Tim didn't want me to talk to the patrons afterwards, he knew I would ruin the whole thing. Just kill the sad little ragamuffin image. So I sat in the office, watched _Cheers_ on VHS and ate Cheetos until my mother took me home."

"And people came up to me months later to tell me how well I did in the play and especially how _beautifully _I sang at the gala," Freddy said smugly. "I have no shame, I didn't tell anyone it wasn't me."

Laughter was the general response to Freddy's conclusion to the tragic tale. Raoul seemed far more relaxed, but he did look a little nervous when he glanced at the time on his cell phone. "Crap, I've got to go," he said, picking up his backpack and fishing around for his keys. "I told my sisters I'd meet them at Turtle Soup for early dinner, they'll freak if I'm late. This was fun, guys, you're all really cool, I'm glad we'll be working together."

Everyone murmured general pleasantries to that and smiled at Raoul – almost everyone. Erik chose that moment to take a _long_ sip of his iced Americano and didn't come up for air until after the time for niceties was concluded. He did glance to the side when Christine popped up from her chair, purse in hand to stand beside Raoul. "Could you give me a ride back to campus?" she asked and didn't give a reason why she wanted to go _now_ when she seemed to have been sitting perfectly content moments before. "I've got English homework and I need to buy some stuff before the bookstore closes."

Raoul responded that he would be only to happy to give Christine a lift and they were out the door in Twenty-five seconds, Erik counted, which was a remarkable time to maneuver through the crush of bodies trying to put in their orders. Raoul must have pushed some people to get by. Or perhaps Christine did. They always said it was the quiet ones you had to watch out for.

Approximately three minutes after that, Charlotte got a call about some sale going on half a block away and took off as though her life depended on the pair of suede boots that Sorelli had smuggled into a dressing room and was holding for her. Armand and Freddy, having nothing better to do, decided to follow and watch the fray that would inevitably result when one mixed a 40% off sale and college girls. Meg had a date to meet some girls from her dance class who were going to school in-state and left soon after, which meant that Ahmed and Erik were once again alone together. They really needed to make more friends, if only to save themselves from having just each other for company most weeknights.

Besides, Ahmed was staring at Erik in that patented 'Do you wanna talk about it?' way that did _not _make Erik want to talk about it, it made Erik want to punch Ahmed in the face. Or it would if Erik was a violent person by nature, which he was not, he simply led a violent fantasy life that occasionally bled over into his _real_ life, but not necessarily by choice and, "Why are you staring at me?" Erik blurted out, glancing at his face, reflected in the mirror next to him. What, was his nose half-off and he hadn't noticed? Because that would be embarrassing.

As it turned out, his nose was fine or, if it wasn't, that had nothing to do with what Ahmed was digging for. "You _like_ her," was his knowing response, as if all the answer's to life's questions resided in that thick skull of his. "It's too obvious."

"You don't?" Erik asked, surprised. "That's a first. You always like people, I never like people."

"No," Ahmed corrected, holding a finger up to stop Erik before he said something completely inane. "I'm _polite_ to people, you're a jackass. Whether I actually like someone doesn't matter, I just don't make a concentrated effort to piss people off all the time – hey!" he cried indignantly, realizing that Erik had succeeded in doing exactly what he'd been trying for. "And don't sidetrack me. I'm just trying to say, if you like Christine – I mean, I like her, but I don't undress her with my eyes constantly, like you – but if you _like_ like her, you should ask her out."

The eyes that had been undressing Christine – blatant exaggeration, by the way, for Erik had not once imagined how she would look _entirely _ naked – rolled heavenward. "If I _like_ like her? Come on, Ahmed, how old are we, twelve?"

"You're missing my point." The exasperation in his tone was so sharp, Erik wondered if, by ignoring Ahmed's point, he had somehow insulted his friend, but still Ahmed had that curious gleam in his eyes of I-want-to-help. Clearly, Erik had to try harder to make him angry. "I just think there's got to be another way to show your interest than trying to shoot laser beams out of your eye sockets at Raoul every time he talks."

"You seem to spend a lot of time contemplating my eyes. Are you sure you're not just projecting your lust for me onto my alleged yearning for Christine?"

"Erik!" Okay, _now_ Ahmed was annoyed. "Fine, forget it, whatever, just, I mean, if you _like_ her - "

"If I _like_ like her, you mean?"

_Now_ came the huff, the eyeroll, the slouching back in the seat, all classic signs of the beginnings of Ahmed Anger. "I don't know why I bother."

"Neither do I," Erik said as he ran a hand through his hair. Oddly, his tone was genuine, he wasn't trying to get Ahmed's goat now that he already had it; that would be redundant. "Seriously, Ahmed, it's not a big deal. And I'm not interested in having a sexual relationship with her. Just so you know. A friendship? Why not, but I don't want to jump her bones, so you can stop harping on it, dear."

Ahmed didn't seem to know how to take that. Sure, Erik _sounded_ sincere, but he learned long ago that what Erik said and what Erik really felt could be two totally different things. It wasn't lying, really, it was that his friend was confusing even to himself. "Sorry, man, I just thought you liked her."

"And I do," Erik said, nodding emphatically. "As a friend, Ahmed. Really, I thought you were more sophisticated than the writers of _When Harry Met Sally_. It is possible that a male can meet a female and want to be friends without any romantic overtures. It happens, you know."

"Not unless one or both is gay and the way Christine was checking out Raoul's ass when he went for napkins - " he paused abruptly and gave Erik a speculative once-over, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Are _you_ - ?"

"Let's not go there," Erik interrupted, swirling the ice around in his empty cup. "I can acknowledge that Christine is a lovely girl – I speak purely aesthetically, forget her personality for a while, but I don't want to bone her."

That explanation seemed to satisfy Ahmed momentarily. But only momentarily.

"Not even a little bit?"

"I have a very low sex drive."

That was the moment Ahmed decided it would be best to let the subject rest. If only for a little while. Looking out the window at the hustling, bustling street outside, Ahmed turned to Erik speculatively. "I don't really feel like going back to the house," he said. The shaking of Erik's head, combined with his looking at his melting cup of ice indicated that he didn't feel like going back either. "Want to take a walk?" he asked, gesturing at the world outside.

It took Erik .8 seconds to make up his mind. Well, that was just a guestimate, he couldn't actually _count_ in .8 seconds of time. "Yeah, sure, let's just do something that's not sitting here. I fucking hate Starbucks."


	22. Java Jive

AN: Not sure if anyone's going to read this, FFNet was being wacky last night and didn't let me edit the chapter at all, so I apologize belatedly for all the typos (not that they're unusual). I've pre-written the bulk of the next few chapters, so they'll be coming out fairly rapidly. I'm glad I seem to be getting more readers and I love reading your reviews. For anyone who's a Freddy fan, the next chapter or two will be very Freddy-heavy, so stay tuned!

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright. I do completely own my Starbucks hatred, though.

* * *

_Oh slip me a slug from the wonderful mug  
and I'll cut a rug 'til I'm snug in a jug  
A slice of onion and a raw one,  
Draw one!  
Waiter, waiter, percolator! _

_I love coffee, I love tea,  
I love the Java Jive and it loves me  
Coffee and tea and the java and me,  
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup!_

_-Manhattan Transfer_

School had been in session for a week and Christine had been working at The Bistro for four of those seven days. It was actually really great, she made some money, padded out her non-theatrical resume and was prompted to work extra hard in school because even after only four days, she knew that she never wanted to work in the service industry indefinitely. Technically, this was considered working in retail, but she would have preferred manning the cash register at Anne Taylor on Black Friday to a six hour shift making coffee after coffee after latte after chai after coffee.

The Bistro was a hip little joint, not like the usual Starbucks franchise kind of place. They had karaoke on alternate Fridays and let local bands set up and jam on weekends and when there wasn't live music, Helen the main shop manager usually kept the radio on a funky oldies station that played an eclectic mix of psychadelic offerings from the 60s and 70s, rockabilly from the 50s and fast electronica from the 80s. There weren't any uniforms to speak of and the staff was encouraged to wear pins on their aprons that said things like, 'God knows if you don't tip,' 'There is no right way to make an Americano,' and 'Pussies drink cream' (it took Christine a solid four hours to understand that one).

Still, no matter how laid back the store was, there was a certain kind of person attracted to a coffee shop. Well, to be fair there were several types, but they usually fell into a few categories. There was the smallest category, the intellectuals, who came in wearing turtlenecks and skinny jeans to discuss poetry and insist that the fireplace be lit in 95 degree weather. Then, next up in terms of scale, there were the students who brought their Macbooks, bought a large tea and sipped it over the course of several hours, occasionally coming back for refills of hot water to make their soggy, spent little tea bag last all day. Finally, there were your run-of-the-mill caffeine addicts, these people ran the gamut of ages from fifteen to ninety-seven and came from all walks of life, from plumber to business executive, from debutante to computer analyst. One thing they had in common: they were all in a hurry, they were all oddly irritable and they _always_ felt that their needs outweighed those of everyone else in the room.

Freddy warned her about those people the moment she stepped behind the cappucino machine. "Some people – okay, a lot of people are just the biggest bitches in the world. If people start yapping at you to hurry up, don't feel bad, just make sure you make the drinks _right_, so they can get it and get the fuck out."

Christine thought that he was exaggerating a bit, but sure enough, she was in the middle of stirring the mix into her first chai of the day when the middle-aged man who ordered it started complaining to his wife that he ordered his drink about _two minutes _ago and if that girl was going _any slower_ she'd be going _backwards. _Being that she was, in fact, Christine, all she could do in response was smile at him apologetically as she handed him his drink and say, "Sorry about the wait."

"Hmm," the man said, then took a sip of the chai with a dubious look on his face. "Is this sugar-free vanilla?"

Uh...

"Um," Christine bit her lip. "I'm not entirely sure, I _think_ so - "

The man gave a short laugh and threw the entire drink into the trash without ceremony, "Well, your thinking doesn't answer my question, does it? Make it again and make it _right_ this time."

The nervous smile vanished from Christine's face in and instant and a hot flush rose to her cheeks. To her utter horror, she felt hot tears stinging at her eyes. Bending low over the shelf that held the chai bins, Christine made sure that she picked up the bucket marked 'Sugar-Free Vanilla' and began the process of stirring and adding hot milk. This time the man took the chai without complaining about it, though his wife did say something about how this never happened at _Starbucks_.

Christine was growing to hate Starbucks.

After the Bitch Chai Couple (as she referred to them) left, Christine realized that a long line had formed in front of her station, about eight people deep, all expecting drinks and expecting them _now. _Some people took pity on her and were very nice as she apologized over and over for the wait, they just smiled and left her a tip and said, "Oh, it's okay, don't worry honey." A few people didn't say anything, just rolled their eyes and took their coffee without a thank you. One or two muttered sarcastically under their breath something to the effect of, "Well, sorry doesn't make my coffee come faster, does it?"

She was beginning to despair of _ever_ getting to the end of the line, it seemed that as soon as she finished steaming the milk for her last mocha, another three order slips would print up in front of her. Eventually, Freddy jogged over to help finish the drink orders, but Christine wasn't entirely relieved when he approached. Disappointment made her flush red again, from the apples of her cheeks to the tips of her ears. She felt just awful that she hadn't managed to do her job without help. After Freddy arrived, it seemed like the line vanished instantly and once they were gone, Christine set about cleaning up various milk spills, not meeting her new friend – now _manager's_ – eyes.

It was too bad that she'd taken this approach since Freddy was smiling and didn't look annoyed at all. "What the hell _was_ that?" he asked, referring to the line, but Christine misunderstood.

"I'm sorry," she said before she could stop herself. "I just...I mean, they asked if it was sugar-free vanilla and I honestly didn't remember either way. I didn't want to _lie _to them."

"Oh, I lie to people all the time," Freddy said,wiping his wet hands on the rag he had tucked into his apron. "'This is soy milk?' Uh, yes. 'This is decaf?' Of course. 'I'm allergic to chocolate, this is carob syrup, right?' Definitely. Little lies, you know. Otherwise you'd be making drinks all day and I'd never update my Facebook."

"Sorry," Christine apologized again, eyes locked onto the 'Friends don't let friends drink Starbucks' button on Freddy's chest. "I won't screw up again."

"Oh sure you will," he said cheerfully, reaching out and ruffling Christine's hair. "I screw up daily – I dropped an entire container of iced coffee last week, all over the floor. No biggie, I cleaned it up." Noting his friend's still defeated stance, Freddy slipped an arm around her shoulders for a Jehovah's Witness sideways hug. "Don't worry, sweetie. And like I said, some people here are assholes, just plain and simple. They're mean to us because they think they can be, but don't think you have to take people's shit. We don't need their $2.75 a day, you don't have to apologize if something's not your fault. And seriously, learn to lie. Come on, you're an actress! It's practice for the stage!"

That got a smile on Christine's face – but only briefly. It was time for drastic measures. Releasing her shoulders, Freddy gave her a firm smack on the ass and said merrily, "Okay, enough pep talk, back to work little soldier!"

Laughing and rubbing her bottom, Christine asked him, "So, you treat _all_ your baristas like that?"

"Oh, yeah," Freddy replied, a wicked gleam in his eyes. "I really should have been fired for sexual harassment right now, but luckily no one takes me seriously.

"Oh, but I know better," Christine said, crouching down to wipe off the surface of the mini-fridge where her milk was stored. "You saucy minx."

"Love you, bitch," her really unprofessional manager said before sauntering off to brew another pot of French Vanilla.

Eventually, Christine got the hang on the lying to the customers thing and realized, hey, some people _were_ just crazy. This morning for instance. No one ordered any fancy bar drinks, so she was just playing assistant to Freddy, fetching iced coffees so that he could ring in orders. One harried looking woman with an infant in a car seat had asked for a medium hazelnut with, "One sugar and more milk than you usually put in."

"Extra milk, sure," Christine said, turning to retrieve the asked for coffee.

"Not extra!" the woman said, holding out a hand as if asking supplication from the coffee gods. Christine turned around, brow slightly furrowed. "Just...more than you usually put in. But not extra."

Um...okay. The Christine of Three Days Ago would have been really confused and asked Freddy for help, but the Christine of Right Now just smiled and put more milk than usual, but in no way was it extra into the coffee. "Perfect!" the young mother said, grinning tiredly and placed her $1.35 in change into the tip cup.

"Nice!" Freddy exclaimed once the patron was out the door and gave Christine a high-five. "See! That's what we do and the crazy people of the world are satisfied. We're performing a service, really."

Charlotte had the art of customer-pleasing down to a science. She always got the biggest tips (Freddy maintained that was because she had the biggest breasts, but that remained to be seen) and the customers absolutely loved her. Christine didn't understand it since what she knew of Charlotte indicated that the other girl was not one to suffer fools lightly or take crap from anyone. Indeed, she did not, but she had a great way of putting people in their place that didn't seem bitchy. Once Christine saw her in action, she understood.

It was kind of useless to try and help Charlotte on food. She was so fast and filled so many orders at once that all Christine did was slice bagels and toast bread to hand over for the redhead to make into sandwiches. It was during one of these manic toasting sessions, when Charlotte had five food orders lined up with three items per order that the magic happened.

A business woman in a stylish gray pants suit was about three orders from the beginning of the queue and she was checking her watch and _sighing_ in that tell-tale 'I am _so _busy and important' way that indicated to all around that she was going to lodge a complaint. Charlotte largely ignored her, but by the third aggravated sigh, she looked over at Christine and made a face that the woman in line wouldn't be able to see. Christine smiled a little at Charlotte and shrugged and it was in that moment that the irate woman decided to speak up.

"Excuse me, I'm in a _hurry_," she said with a huff. "Could you just move mine up?"

Charlotte turned to her then, peeling off her cream cheese covered plastic gloves slowly. "I'm sorry," she said sweetly, and it was a credit to the actress in her that there was more honey than vinegar in her smile. "But we don't triage our breakfast foods."

Christine stored that retort away in her brain for future reference. Today was relatively slow, she was working a late afternoon shift with Freddy and Charlotte on a day when they didn't have any theatre classes. It seemed that no one else from their class knew what to do with themselves if there wasn't a class going on since Erik, Sorelli and Armand had all made their way over to The Bistro to grab bar drinks and harass her.

"Hey, hurry up, I'm very busy and important," Erik teased her, leaning across the counter as Christine pumped caramel into his iced latte.

She smiled and stuck her tongue out at him playfully, "I'm sorry, we don't triage our coffees."

Erik pretended to look horrified. "Sir!" he called out, directing his attention to Freddy. "Sir! This _barista_ of yours just stuck her tongue out at me!"

"Sexual harassment!" Sorelli cried gleefully as she waited (with perfect patience) for her chocolate chai. "But really, Christine, you can sexually harass _me _whenever you feel like it."

In response, Christine blew her room mate a kiss and batted her eyelashes prettily. She was getting the hang of this group of people fairly quickly. There wasn't much awkwardness where assimilating into the group was concerned, they were all really cool and they liked getting together a _lot_. They were going to be watching movies at The Triad (the name Armand had come up with to refer to the house Erik, Freddy and Armand were all sharing together) once she, Charlotte and Freddy got off work and she was totally stoked about it. It hadn't been like this in high school, she only got together with her theatre friends after rehearsal and performances and usually only long enough to grab a bite to eat, maybe catch a late movie, there wasn't this close-knit sense of companionship, this spontaneous togetherness that her new theatre friends had.

Like now, for example, Armand had gotten a hold of an abandoned Lifebeat section of _The Providence Journal_. "You guys want to go see _Inglourious Basterds_ this weekend?"

"Yes!" Erik shouted, causing several people to look up from their Macbooks, startled out of their academic reverie. "A thousand times yes, it's Tarantino, we have to go!"

"I'm not big on violence - " Christine began hesitantly, but Erik was quick to interrupt.

"Oh, come now, Christine, it'll be great, you close your eyes when it gets bloody - "

Then a strange thing happened. Erik, known for his tendency to interrupt others, found himself interrupted.

"_Excuse_ me," a thin girl with straight blonde hair said, flipping the aforementioned hair over her shoulder. "Can you and your girlfriend shut up for a minute so she can make my latte?"

Bad idea. _Bad_ idea. Christine turned the steamer on the cappucino machine up _really_ loudly to hopefully drown out Erik's retort. No such luck. "You're excused," he said, drawing himself up to his considerable height and glaring daggers down at the girl who dared to interrupt her. "And no, I don't feel like shutting up. I believe Christine is perfectly capable of carrying on a conversation and warming up milk. Though I can understand how you might believe that's difficult for other people."

"Asshole," was her witty reply.

Erik grimly replied, "Incorrigible, even."

Either she realized that argument was futile or didn't understand what 'incorrigible' meant, because she turned to her companion, a dark-skinned, curly haired girl and started speaking unnecessarily loudly, re-entering a conversation that she had evidently abandoned to bitch at Christine. "So yeah, I think I'm going to try out for _Godspell_."

"Who's doing _Godspell?_" Christine asked as she handed the latte over. It was probably not smart to try talking to this girl, but she was honestly interested. That was the show they were going to be doing at Memorial, the BFA kids. As far as she knew, none of the other major theatre companies in the state were doing it.

The curly haired girl gave Christine a slightly appraising look and said, "Memorial Rep is holding auditions next Tuesday. It's a theatre. If you know what that is.

"Thursday," Christine corrected automatically, her brow slightly furrowed. Really? How stupid did she look that she didn't know what live theatre was. "Um. Yeah, they are...I thought auditions were closed?" she directed the question to Erik and Armand, Sorelli had wandered off to talk to the university's assistant men's basketball coach and was unavailable for comment.

Armand hesitated, looking between Christine and the Other Blonde before replying. "Technically university policy doesn't allow us to close auditions to outside actors..." _Long_ pause as he wondered whether or not he was likely to get a hot latte thrown in his face if he continued. "Um, but I wouldn't bother if I were you. It's already cast. Basically."

Other Blonde snorted derisively. "And who the fuck are you, the director?"

"No," Armand said slowly. "But I _know_ him. We all do. We're the cast."

Other Blonde laughed, a scornful, unlovely sound. "Yeah, sure, and who the hell are you?"

"We're BFA majors," Erik said, a small smile playing around his mouth. "Let me guess, you're a BA?" He said 'BA' with an unnecessary amount of condescension, but it got his point across.

"We both are," Curly Haired Girl piped up, glaring at Erik and folding her arms.

"Oh, joy," Erik said coolly, ignoring the restraining hand Armand laid on his arm. "Well, clearly you have nothing of value to contribute to the world of theatre or to this fine establishment, so why don't you just take your latte and shoo?"

"Uh, fuck you," Other Blonde said. "You think you're so great? All you assholes _bought_ your way into that program, don't try and act like - "

"Hey!" Freddy had arrived, a little too late and a little too loudly. "Uh, Christine, if you want to just finish a couple of dishes, you can clock out. And uh, yeah, Erik, I'll see you back at the house. Um. Yeah. Back to your lives, citizens."

Since the manager (a manager that they didn't _know_ was a member of the Infamous BFA Program – Inglourious BFA Program?) had arrived, the two girls took Erik's suggestion to heart and shooed, but not before they flipped the group of them off, very maturely.

"What the hell _was_ that?" Freddy asked after the girls had gone.

"Fuck if I know," Erik said, shaking Armand's hand off at last. "They were weird."

"Very weird," Christine confirmed, nodding emphatically. "They said they wanted to audition for _Godspell, _then Armand was like, oh no, you shouldn't bother and then they swore at us and...yeah, it was...tense."

"They were BA majors," Armand said by way of an explanation and the light of understanding shone in Freddy's eyes.

"Oh," he said knowingly. "Yeah, they are weird. Whatever, I wouldn't worry about them. So yeah, Christine, scrub a plate and you're out of here. Nice work today, see you at the house."


	23. I Only Want To Say

AN: VERY Freddy-centric chapter, though Chester makes a brief appearance as well. I think it's totally time for Erik to have a small medical emergency. On a Phantom forum long ago, the topic of Erik's deformity and possible causes was explored and it came out that Porphyria Cutanea Tarda did explain a lot to explain why Erik looked the way he did and that's what I've gone with here. If it isn't properly monitored and dealt with, loss of facial extremities can occur because of infection, liver damage can produce very severe jaundice and some varieties of porphyria can cause mental imbalances, including, but not limited to bi-polar disorder, so I just took that diagnosis and ran with it. I did some preliminary research and tried to be a bit vague on the details of the condition, just so I don't get anything REALLY wrong. Anyway, nice semi-angsty chapter for you guys to enjoy! Well, as angsty as you can get when there's orange juice and Barbara Streisand involved.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_I only want to say  
If there is a way  
Take this cup away from me  
For I don't want to taste its poison  
Feel it burn me,  
I have changed I'm not as sure  
As when we started_

_  
Then I was inspired  
Now I'm sad and tired  
Listen surely I've exceeded  
Expectations  
Tried for three years  
Seems like thirty  
Could you ask as much  
From any other man?_

_-Jesus Christ Superstar_

It was the Saturday before the Thursday of auditions and Freddy was somewhere between acceptance and panic. He'd prepared his audition piece, "Gethsemane" from _Jesus Christ Superstar_. Erik scoffed at his selection, (duh, because Erik was a bad friend and Freddy was an AMAZING friend), something about how just going in and reciting the Beatitudes would look less like he was angling for the role of Jesus, but come _on. _Who _wouldn't_ want to play Jesus in a musical? Well, okay, except for Erik, but he was weird, so that was that.

Nevertheless, the song choice was psyching him out a bit. It was a rock opera, of course, and Freddy was just not a rock and roll kind of kid. Watching Michael Ball try his vocal chords at the song gave him hope and Michael Crawford did it in concert once and if there was anyone in the world who had less of a rock and roll edge than Freddy Richard it was Michael Crawford.

He did all he could to be at his best on Thursday, he even sang it in the shower when no one was home. Once, he'd forgotten himself and launched into the big finale note when scrubbing for work, not realizing there were two other people in the house that he was rousing from sleep. Ahmed was not pleased, he busted into the bathroom, holding a butter knife threatening to go all Norman Bates on his ass if he didn't shut the fuck up right now. From that time on, he reserved all singing for his post-work shower in the afternoon.

It wasn't just the song that was the problem, he had to admit to himself. After Thursday night's verbal scuffle with the BA candidates, Freddy was getting a little nervous that shit might go down at auditions. Evidently, word of Erik's bitchiness had spread through St. Mary's Fine Arts Center and now about twenty-five of them were signed up to audition on Thursday for what was supposed to be a BFA production. It wasn't that Freddy was really nervous, after all, they had auditioned for their program, they clearly had some kind of edge, whatever that might be, but it still freaked him out a little that there would be so many kids milling around Memorial who were thinking bad thoughts and sending all kinds of negative karma around.

In this state of distraction, it was hardly surprising that Freddy found himself becoming a mite more absent-minded than usual. Today, for instance, he had forgotten the plastic key that opened the toilet paper dispensers in the restrooms at The Bistro. After five people had approached him, whining about the fact that there was no toilet paper, he sucked it up and drove back home around noon to remedy the problem, all the while wondering why they didn't just use Kleenex like every other person on the face of the planet who didn't have toilet paper.

Ahmed's van was gone when he pulled in and the house was silent after he opened the door. Vaguely, he remembered Ahmed saying something about needing to go to his grandmother's for...something that afternoon and he assumed that Erik had gone with him, for lack of anything better to do with himself. It was just going to be a quick stop-off, a jaunt upstairs to grab the key and he figured he'd be back at work in fifteen minutes. No biggie.

Okay, little biggie. He couldn't _find_ the damn thing. He looked under his bed, in his sock drawer, on his desk, but still the key remained lost. Freddy was digging through his laundry hamper when he heard a car pull into the driveway and a voice echoed up from the pavement through his open window.

"Come on, lamb chop, up and at 'em."

It took Freddy just a minute to place the voice, but he recognized it as belonging to Chester, though his tone was infinitely softer...more maternal, he supposed was an accurate descriptor. Weird. Why would Chester be dropping by and who was he talking to?

Being a curious kitty cat, Freddy forgot all about the toilet paper drama and crept into the upstairs hallway, hiding behind his door when slow, shuffling feet made their way upstairs. While waiting, he felt a thrill of excitement go up his spine. This was _fun, _a little odd, but fun, solving the mystery of Chester in his house and – wait a minute. How did he get into the house?

The shuffling sound stopped abruptly and was followed by the faint sound of something falling softly onto something else. Yeah, listening behind half-closed doors was not the most efficient way to process stimuli. When the walking sound started up again, more quickly this time, Freddy felt it was safe to come out. He just caught a glimpse of the back of Chester's bald head rounding the corner to walk down the stairs. Hmm. To follow or not to follow? That decision was made for him, scant seconds later, the front door slammed shut and Freddy assumed that Chester was taking off. Well, whatever he'd catch up with Chester soon enough at school and ask what the hell he was doing in his living room – hey! Maybe the toilet paper key was in the couch!

Eager to test this latest hypothesis, Freddy scurried off into the living room. And then stopped dead in his tracks.

Erik lay on the couch, noseless, eyes at half-mast staring blankly at the ceiling. The television was on, but he wasn't facing it; evidently he didn't have the energy to roll over.

Totally not what Freddy had been expecting. "H-hey, dude," he said cautiously, slowly making his way into Erik's line of vision. "Uh...are you...what's wrong?"

There was a really long pause before Erik spoke in a muffled, barely audible voice that Freddy was not used to hearing. "M'okay."

"Um...okay, _no, _you're _clearly_ not," Freddy said, his own voice an octave above normal has he took in the way Erik's chest was moving rapidly up and down, his overall lethargy and the paleness of his skin, which was really something to notice in a guy for whom it was medically advisable to stay out of the sun. "Are you sick? Do you need to go to the hospital?"

"Been there. Done that." It sounded like he was exerting a great effort just to get those two short sentences out.

"But what's _wrong?" _Freddy asked slightly desperately, standing over Erik worriedly, since if he crouched beside him, he knew, Erik would not actually turn his head to look at him.

"Nothing. Be fine in a day or two."

Okay, not that Freddy was one to doubt Erik's veracity, but this _was _the kid who proudly proclaimed that if he said something with enough conviction people would just _believe _him and he certainly wasn't being believable now. Maybe he should call Erik's mom...but then Maddy, for all of her fabulousness was likely to just freak out and take to bed with a cold compress over her forehead. Theatrics she excelled at. Mothering not so much.

Charlie? Oh hell no, Charlie was absolutely no good in a crisis situation involving people, he'd probably just shrug and stand in the corner and look at his watch a lot. Tim. He was going to have to call Tim, or Chester, whichever, they were way more effective parents to Erik than the people who gave him his DNA. Not that he denied the love, but love wasn't going to force Erik into the back of an ambulance...then _again,_ Chester had _been_ here, but he was _gone_ now and clearly didn't think there was a problem, which there totally _was,_ but Freddy thought he should probably save 911 as a last resort -

"Here you go, little lamb, OJ, and I'm not leaving until that glass is gone," came Chester's impossibly chipper voice out of the void of doom that had encircled Freddy's fragile little heart. "Oh, heya honey," he said to Freddy who was standing stock-still, almost as white as Erik was. "I didn't know you'd be here, Erik told me you had to work."

"I...uh, I left early." What sort of Twilight Zone special was he in? Was it the episode where all the ugly people were beautiful and Molly Sims got told off because she didn't look like a Ferengi? Except, instead of looks, all the healthy people were crazy and sick people just stayed on the couch and didn't go to the hospital. What was he thinking when he decided that Chester and Tim would be a good option? Neither of them had medical training. At least Maddy would have the good sense to _panic_ in the face of this obvious crisis. God bless Mother Madeline.

Meanwhile, Chester just sort of 'hmm'ed pleasantly, as much of a non-verbal, 'That's nice, dear,' as anything could be. "Okay, sweetie, you've got to sit up a little, I'm not throwing it at you to see if it leaks in your pores."

Erik made a small sound of either resignation or indigence, it was hard to tell.

"Come on, sugar plum, let's go, get with the program." Setting the glass of juice on the table (complete with swirly straw, a nice island touch), Chester reached under Erik's arms and tugged him into a sitting position against the pillows. It was lucky Erik, though unwieldy, didn't actually weigh that much. "Okay, here comes the train," he said, picking up the glass and holding the end of the straw to Erik's thin, white, pinched lips. It was a testament to how tired he was, the fact that Erik didn't even have a smart ass remark to Chester's treating him like he was an infant, he just feebly drank his orange juice like the good little boy Chester clearly hoped that he would be.

It was incredibly intimate and awkward to watch, like Freddy had just walked in on the Pope taking a crap or something, just a position that he never needed to see that particular fixture in his life in. "So..." he began, desiring to fill this dead air with something aside from the sound of Erik trying to choke down his juice. "He already went to the hospital?"

"Yeah – no, don't you stop until this glass is empty, I'll talk, you drink – yeah, I drove him in at about eight this morning, he had a phlebotomy."

"A what?" It sounded too much like 'lobotomy' for Freddy's comfort, but Erik's hair _seemed _to be intact, slightly wilder and more mussed than usual, so if they'd drilled into his head to remove a chunk of gray matter, it wasn't like anyone could really tell. Maybe they went in through the nose-hole. You could get to your brain from there, right?

"A phle – he had some blood taken out," Chester said by way of explanation, since every good teacher, especially a costume history teacher, knows that simply repeating an unknown vocab word back to a student will not give them any kind of clarity regarding meaning.

"...how much is some?"

"A lot," the teacher said vaguely, since there were some things that students didn't need to know and why clutter their head with new information that would just confuse them? Keep it simple and need-to-know, that was how he got through a lot of days working with these kids. "He's just feeling a little anemic, he'll pull himself back together in a week or so." Of course, this being Erik, he'd be back on his bike riding in circles around the block in two days for no reason, just to prove that he could do it, but experience taught him that it really took the kid a week to build his platelet count up to a point where he could function close to normally. It was the second treatment that really did the little fellow in and yes, Erik would always be a little fellow to him regardless of how much he towered over everyone.

He was usually okay after the first treatment, which had been performed over a week ago. After that round, Erik was back at the theatre by early evening, a little drawn and woozy, but largely okay. Now he was wiped out and going to remain that way for some time, which was why Chester was here playing nursemaid and not in the costume shop sewing until his fingers bled; he'd seen enough of that for one day, thanks.

"_Anemia?"_ the kid's voice was a warbling squeak now.

"Mm-hmm," Chester replied, taking the glass away when Erik did his duty and slumped back down against the pillows, clearly intending to remain that way indefinitely. The boy's head lolled back only a few seconds later, his jaw lax and mouth slightly open, fast asleep. Nodding toward the kitchen, Chester indicated silently that Freddy should follow him and, being a good little actor boy, able to pick up on visual cues, Freddy did not disappoint. "He went in for...well, they call it a therapeutic phlebotomy, it's done in two sessions and they did the first one last Saturday."

"He told me he was going to therapy," Freddy suddenly remembered, sinking down, slightly weak-kneed, to sit at the kitchen table. "I thought he meant he finally called his therapist back."

"Yeah, all quiet on that front for the last six months. I swear, if that boy doesn't make an appointment, I'm going to get him in my car and force him to go myself. I'll blindfold him and tell him we're going to the Met or something." A cursory glance back at the living room. "I mean, I guess I could take him now, but he's kind of useless. To a therapist, anyway."

Freddy was still struggling to understand exactly what it was that made Erik look and act like death warmed over in the living room. "Yeah, okay, so, he had one last week, but he wasn't like _this_ last week."

Chester sighed heavily; it would really be so much easier if Erik just de-briefed his friends about his medical history _before_ they gave into histrionics in the kitchen. Without asking, he removed a second cup from the cabinet and poured Freddy an orange juice of his own, the kid looked like he could use a drink and Chester wasn't about to break the law and add some vodka, however necessary the gesture might be. "Well, no, but the point is to induce mild anemia in patients...okay, so, the _why_ is because Erik has this problem where his blood...it makes too much iron and then his liver freaks out and then he blisters in the sun like a Violent Femme, he gets really sick _–_ I mean, _really_ sick, this is nothing, compared to how bad he gets if his treatment routine isn't kept up."

Freddy accepted his juice stoically and downed half the glass in one gulp and, yes, he really did wish that there was something harder he could drink in front of Chester without inviting a lecture on the dangers of underage drinking. Was this how alcoholism got started? "I thought he just has a skin condition, that's what he said, like...freckles. Freckles aren't bad."

Looking at Freddy's own cinnamon-sprinkled cheeks, Chester smiled a little ruefully and mightily resisted the urge to ruffle the kid's hair. Mary really was such a well-meaning little cutie, wasn't he? God, he would just eat him up with a spoon, freckles and all.

"Well...he _does_," Chester said with a shrug. "Have a skin condition I mean, only _instead_ of freckling, he gets blisters and those might get infected and then little love's in for a world of pain and hospital visits. But if he gets his blood removed...okay, I'm not really sure why, but it makes him better. His skin doesn't freak out as much and for a few hours in the hospital twice every six months or so, he gets a Get Out of the Emergency Room Free card."

In truth things were slightly more complicated than that – a lot more, actually, but again, the teacher/student need-only basis. Chester held all the cards, but Freddy just needed to know how to win at Black Jack...or some other equally erudite metaphor, he'd been up since six in the morning, dragging Erik's sorry behind all over creation, he wasn't so much up to witty banter and wise sayings at the moment.

Eventually, Freddy remembered that he _really_ needed to get back to work and found the key he was looking for, hanging on the key hook by the door where he'd placed it so that he wouldn't forget. When Freddy re-entered the house room four hours later, he noticed that Chester's car wasn't in the driveway and the light from the television was blinking a hazy blue in the living room.

Cautiously, he doffed his apron over one arm and tip-toed inside in case Erik was still sleeping. He needn't have bothered with caution, the other boy was sitting up on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, still wearing his jeans and shirt from the morning, but his shoes were off. Erik was sipping occasionally from a large cup of (guess what?) orange juice and watching _Hello, Dolly!_ "Hey," he said, glancing up when Freddy walked in. "There's veggie lasagna in the oven, Chester was here earlier, he said it would be done in a half an hour, if you want some."

Ah, so _that _was what smelled so delicious, Freddy caught a whiff of something awesome when he walked in and he knew it sure as hell wasn't Erik's stocking feet. "Cool, so he didn't stick around?" he asked, throwing his apron over the radiator and sitting down on the couch next to Erik. "He told me that he might stay until late."

Erik's eyes narrowed, reflecting the light from the television creepily in the dimly-lit room. It was so weird when his eyes did that, kind of...vampirish. When Freddy went through his Anne Rice faze in high school he envied Erik mightily for that ability (still did, though he wasn't going to admit it). "When did you talk to Chester?"

"This morning," Freddy replied, confused. "I forgot the bathroom key in my room when I closed last night, so I came back...you were on the couch – do you not remember? I talked to you. You talked back. I mean, not _well_, but there was definite communication happening."

Erik's brow furrowed and he stared at Freddy for a good long moment there before shrugging and watching Barbra Streisand strut her stuff through a cardboard New York City. "No, I don't remember much of anything from earlier today. If you were here, you probably noticed that I was a little out of it."

"Uh, yeah, understatement of the _century_," Freddy said, rolling his eyes and propping his feet up with Erik's on the ottoman. "I'll have you know, you scared the _crap_ out of me, I was ready to call 911 before Chester told me that, oh, it's cool, he's just lost all his blood, he'll be fine in an hour." He didn't even have to look to his right, he could _feel_ Erik rolling his eyes at him.

"Clearly not _all _of my blood was removed, otherwise I'd be dead."

"Hey, Jim Caviezel seemed okay in _Passion of the Christ_ and he _so _lost more than five gallons in that movie."

Another palpable eye roll. "Still stuck on the Jesus kick? And the human body contains five _liters_ of blood, darling boy. You might look like Dougie Howser, my friend, but as far as medical knowledge is concerned - "

"Hey, I _know_ that, about the five liters thing. I was saying, that our man JC totally lost more than five gallons. So _there_, bitch, I was using hyperbole." Erik did not have to look to his left to feel Freddy sticking out his tongue at him. Ordinarily he would ask his bud if that was some kind of invitation or insult, but he didn't have the energy.

"Well, he was the son of God. His blood had magical regenerative properties to replenish itself as long as it took for Mel Gibson to get someone to proof-read the Aramaic. In any case, not all of his blood was removed, so your point, as they say in France, is le bullshit."

"They do _not_ say that."

"How do you know?" Erik replied immediately – yeah, he was never too tired to be a bitch. "You don't know whether a quart is bigger than a pint."

"Shithead," Freddy said, getting up off the couch and wandering into the kitchen for a slice of lasagna...and after considering for a moment, he cut a second slice for Erik and brought it up to him.

"Aw, gee, thanks mom," Erik shot a lopsided grin at Freddy. Being that he was the most awesome friend in the history of awesome friends, Freddy just handed the food over, rolled his eyes and paid absolutely no attention to the slight tremor in Erik's hands as he took his plate and fork. Sometimes you need people to take care of you and a good friend wouldn't make a big production of it. A good friend would get you lasagna and watch Walter Matthau sing slightly off-key with you. Freddy was a fucking good friend.


	24. I Never Knew His Name

AN: A little bit of R/C in this chapter for those of you who are into that sort of thing! I can't tell you now how relationships will unfold, but I hope I can steer away from what is expected. Anyway, the kids have decided that they need to launch a full-scale war against the BA candidates. (Though, really, what's the point? They all have the same goals.) There's more conflict and confrontation in the next installment, tune in next time!

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

The BFA crew decided to meet up at The Triad the Wednesday before auditions. There was some discussion about whether or not just borrowing a practice room at the FAC on campus might be a better central location for pre-audition rehearsal, but Freddy maintained said that he was putting his bunny slippers on after he got home from work and did _not _want to drive to and from school in the middle of the night. Also, Erik was still feeling kinda crappy and wasn't up for travel, but that excuse was conveniently glossed over. The house just made sense, it was only fifteen minutes or so from school, it had a piano and Erik to make musical theatre magic and if anyone really didn't want to drive back, they could crash on the futon. They didn't have a harrowing day dragging the thing around the house just so people would come into the living room to admire it, after all.

In the end, everyone decided that they could make it, even Raoul had been invited and Erik hadn't put up a fuss. They had to launch war against the BA people, he decided and they needed all hands on deck, especially disposable people who could be thrown to the wolves while the rest of them beat a hasty retreat. Not that retreat would be necessary. They would own at auditions. It was just easier to be confident when you were absolutely _sure _that you would own at auditions.

The piano was a shiny baby grand that Freddy's grandma didn't feel like paying to have shipped to Florida. It lived in the parlor on the first floor. This was probably the most typically 'old lady' room in the house, the furniture was upholstered in floral velor, there were antimacassers on the sofa arms and the picture window, complete with window seat, was framed by lace curtains that the boys hadn't gotten around to removing yet. They had taken down the framed prints of kittens romping together in gilt frames, it was just something they couldn't handle having hanging in their house.

No one really seemed to mind the decorating situation, Christine and Raoul were cozily settled on the window seat, Sorelli and Charlotte shared the sofa while everyone else took up various lounging positions on pillows on the floor. What began as a quick run-through of monologues and songs was quickly becoming a strategy session. There was a grand total of 23 BA kids signed up on the audition shit when Armand last checked at 5:30 that evening. Evidently they were serious about trying to take down the BFA regime.

"It's so _bizarre_," Armand had said on the phone to Erik a few hours prior. "I don't get what they're trying to do, it's not like they're going to get into the program if they get into the show."

"It's not like they're going to get into the show," Erik corrected, shooting down that pipe dream. And they wouldn't. It wasn't something that he had specifically discussed with Tim, but after their last acting class, he made the telling statement that it was so _great_ they had an even ten students, it was just _perfect _for their first production.

"Maybe they're trying to shut us down," Meg theorized from Charlotte's lap where she was resting her head. "Maybe they think they can...come in and be bitches and the university will try to get rid of us."

Armand dismissed that notion with a snort of derision. "Are you kidding me? We make that school a _lot_ of money, have you _seen _your tuition bills lately? No, I think they just want to prove a point."

"What point?" Jamie asked, attempting to manually re-weave the frayed edge of her scarf. "That they're assholes? Well, good for you, there are a lot of mean people in the world."

"We should kill them," Erik said sullenly.

Ahmed's reply was slowly and patiently spoken. "Erik, we've been over this. When is homicide the answer?"

Erik lowered his eyes and muttered something unintelligible.

"Sorry, what was that?"

Sighing heavily, Erik spoke up in a well-rehearsed tone. "Never."

"Right." Evidently satisfied that Erik's inner sociopath was under control, Ahmed continued, "I think they're just going to go to the auditions and suck and then not get in and get over it. What else can they possibly do?"

"Erik, aren't you playing the piano at auditions?" Jamie asked. "Why don't you just play everything up-tempo and screw them up?"

"I actually considered it," Erik said with a sigh. "But karma's a bitch and anyway, Gaspard is playing, Tim decided that it wasn't fair for me to play at something I was auditioning for." Gaspard Lefevre was Erik's own voice teacher and music instructor, a man who was incredibly gifted and incredibly fair. Which did not work out well for the kiddos planning a hostile takeover of _Godspell_ auditions.

Christine, who had been fairly quiet on the plotting side of things until now, chose that moment to speak up, "What if...okay, not to be miss Debbie Downer here, but what if they're really good? Or one of them is?"

"If they were really good, they'd be in the program," Sorelli deflected easily. "That shit about us buying our way in really pissed me off. And they said it to you! You and Raoul are both here and you never worked at Memorial before, but you're here now 'cuz you're good, so yeah. It's complete crap. Like, what they said? It's complete and utter bullshit. I wish I'd been there when Bitchface got all Bitchfacy at you. I would have thrown my drink at her, no word of a lie."

"Oh, _such_ a lie," Charlotte scoffed, kicking Sorelli lightly across the couch. "You would not, you would have just stood there like everyone else did until they went away. That's all you can do. They were just trying to get a rise out of you, you guys shouldn't have let them. I blame Erik."

He who was at fault rolled his eyes. "Oh yeah, like that's anything new," he said plucking out a few random notes on the keyboard boredly. "Regardless of whose fault it is - "

Charlotte coughed at that moment, and her cough sounded suspiciously like, '_Erik_.'

"_Regardless_," he said again, more emphatically this time, "we have a few options. We can ignore them, do our best, get in, whatever, no muss no fuss. We can actively try to sabotage them, which will take work and planning and we'd have about...twenty-hours to pull that together, so good luck. Or, we can just...subtly, freak them out."

Raoul had no idea what was going on, he was just here to be social, really, since his song was as good as it was going to get, in his opinion and he hadn't finished memorizing his monologue, so no one could help him there. Procrastinator? Why yes, but he attributed that to his ADD and – oh! Look, a bunny!

"Okay," he said, venturing into conversation-land, a dangerous place to be at the moment. "So, I'm a little confused...why do we need to do _anything_ to them? Like, why don't we like them?"

A contemplative pause greeted that question.

"It's a little complicated," Meg settled on finally and everyone nodded their agreement. Right. Complicated. "Like, okay, so we – or, _I_, I don't really speak for everyone else – I don't really _care_ about them. Or if they audition, we keep auditions open just in case we need extra people, swings and just ensemble members. They think it's some kind of challenge, to prove their better. Sometimes BA people do get lead parts, but that's rare, Tim likes to keep things very much in our department, but at the same time he says we need healthy competition and theatre can't exist in a vacuum...but, like, we auditioned, we're here and I'm not trying to be elitist, but...we should be the ones in the shows."

"Oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense," Raoul nodded agreeably. "Don't they have their own shows to audition for?"

"Yes!" Sorelli exclaimed, a little too loudy, startling Freddy who'd fallen asleep on the floor. "Sorry, honey, but _yes!_ They have their own theatre space and their own shows and their own auditions, but for some reason they like picking on us. The kids who were in the BFA program always complained. Sometimes they do really nasty stuff too, like itching powder in the costumes, if we rent them from St. Mary's, or stealing make up and shoes. I mean, who does that?"

"Guys, back on topic please," Ahmed said, in a vain effort to bring the room to order. "The BA people are dicks, we get that, so what do we do about it?" Normally he wasn't so combative, but after what Armand and Erik told him about their conduct at The Bistro, he firmly felt that asses needed to be kicked. "Subtle, Erik? You said something about being subtle?"

"Yeah," Erik nodded, absently going through the sheet music he had lined up on the piano. "Nothing violent or anything, just something to intimidate them a bit..." A light came on behind his eyes and a smile graced his thin lips. "Actually, I think I might know the perfect thing. Yes. That'll do nicely." Sharp eyes roved over the assembled group and fell on Christine in the back. "Christine, come here, we'll run your number once again."

"Uh...sure," Christine said, eying Erik speculatively. So, he had a plan, but wasn't going to _tell_ anyone what that plan was? Seemed a little sketchy to her, but whatever, at least Erik _had_ a plan. Taking her place before the piano, Erik gave her a few bars before giving the cue. Her song choice was a little bizarre, considering the fact that most of the group was going for a religious-theme and she had chosen "I Never Knew His Name" from _The Civil War_. It was kind of appropriate, she thought, just, like, if she imagined she was a random witness to the crucifixion. Just ignore that 'dressed in blue or gray' line.

"_I never knew his name,  
Guess it's just as well.  
So I do my part  
Hiding from my heart,  
Whispering goodbye,  
Thanking God that I  
Never knew his name."_

"Very pretty," Erik said when she concluded and there was still that little satisfied smile on his face. "Maybe someday you'll move beyond ballads, but that's very good."

Blushing a bit, Christine was absurdly pleased by the backhanded compliment, though she tried not to let it show. "Uh, thanks," she said awkwardly, shuffling back to her spot after Erik handed her sheet music over. Then he proceeded to scribble on a little piece of paper and look ridiculously smug while doing so. After a minute, he looked back up and said, "Who did I forget?"

"Me!" Sorelli piped up, jumping and waving her hand around like she was a first grader with a full bladder. It was only polite to sit and listen to Sorelli continue the Bible-musical theme by singing "Stranger to the Rain" from _Children of Eden. _She did so at Erik's suggestion, originally the plan was "Jacob and Sons" from _Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat_, but the skinny pianoman shot her down. A, because the song was a little out of her range and B, because there was far too much Andrew Lloyd Weber clogging up auditions anyway, there didn't need to be any more.

As it turned out, Erik made a stellar decision for her. It showed off her range nicely and Sorelli had the badass bitch quality necessary to pull off the song without descending into pathos. Yet the fact remained that the hour was late, so when Christine started yawning in the middle, it was definitely not due to Sorelli's vocal efforts. "I think I need to head back to campus," she said, amid cries of, 'Oh, _no! _But it's only eleven 'oclock!'

"Wait, are you all staying?" Christine asked, looking most pointedly at her roomies. They'd driven up in Sorelli's car and the girl in question was making herself cozy on the floor next to Armand.

"Um...I was kind of planning on it, yeah," she said sheepishly. Then, realizing the rudeness of just assuming Christine wanted to have a sleepover too, she reached for her purse and began digging around for her keys. "If you want, you can just drive my car back to campus, it's not a big deal, I don't care. I should have told you I wanted to chill after - "

"I can drive you back," Raoul offered, twirling his own car keys around his fingers. "I need to head back to my dorm anyway, I've got a math test tomorrow at eight."

"Eight in the_ morning?_" Meg asked, utterly aghast.

"Yeah," he confirmed. "I was stupid, I mean, I used to get up at seven to go to my old high school, I thought getting up at seven-thirty to take Finite Math would be easier. It's not. But I seriously shouldn't miss a test."

Once they said their goodbyes and gave hugs and kisses (a little weird since they'd all be reunited in less than twelve hours) Raoul and Christine stepped out into the cool almost-autumn air. "That was fun," Raoul said, smiling at Christine in that melt-your-knees way he had.

Christine returned the smile and nodded. "Yeah, it's cool that the guys let us come over, Erik's...like, freakishly talented on piano, isn't he?"

"Freakishly talented, yeah," he said, walking around to the passenger side door to let Christine in the car. "Weird that he didn't run his song though."

Christine was a little surprised when Raoul held the door open for her and forgot entirely commenting on Erik's lack of rehearsing at this rehearsal. "Thanks," she said grinning hugely at Raoul. This was like something out of _The Princess Bride_...you know. If they had cars in _The Princess Bride._

Raoul shrugged and smiled self-consciously. "I've got two older sisters, I'm kind of required to be a gentleman or they'll hunt me down and..." '_Castrate_ _me,' _was what he was going for, but that didn't seem like a gentlemanly statement to make. "...Uh...it won't be pretty."

"Oh, I don't have any brothers or sisters, I've always wanted a sister though," Christine said, sliding into the cold, leather seat.

"It's okay, my sisters are a _lot_ older than me," Raoul elaborated, getting into the driver's seat and starting the car. "Ten years older and my brother, Phil, he's a senior this year at Brown. I was kind of a surprise. My mom thought she was going through menopause and then nine months later, I was like, surprise! Well, not really, she found out before I was born, but it was...surprising."

"Oh, I was very much planned for," Christine said. "My dad loves to tell people that when he and my mom started trying to have kids – they had been married for, like, five years already, they told my grandma. My mom's mom, she's uber Catholic that they were trying and she was just like, 'What, _trying?_ What do you mean _trying?_' She didn't get the whole birth control concept."

"Awkward."

"Yeah, totally."

"So, what, after you they stopped trying again?" he asked, a gentle teasing note in his voice. "They were just like, oh, okay, we've got a Christine, one is enough."

Christine giggled a little and shook her head. "Uh, no, they thought they'd wait a little until I was older to have a kid, I think they wanted to hold off until I was three or something, but my mom got sick – cancer – and, um, she just wasn't healthy enough for more. She...died. When I was five." It was never an easy thing to tell people, that her mother died so long ago. Not because she had any great gaping psychological scars over the whole thing, she made her peace with it a while ago, but other people always acted like her mother had passed away yesterday, which just made it all a lot more uncomfortable than it needed to be.

Take Raoul, for instance. He looked positively _horrified_ at the revelation and immediately began apologizing all over the place. "Oh my god, Christine, I'm so sorry, I didn't know, I shouldn't have brought up the whole...birth thing - "

"It's totally fine, don't worry," Christine interrupted before he stroked himself out. "It's not like I go around wearing a big t-shirt that says, 'My mom's dead, don't talk to me.' That would be really creepy."

Raoul laughed nervously. "Yeah, I guess so. But still, sorry about that." And he took one hand off the wheel to reach over and give her a supportive shoulder squeeze. It was a sweet thing to do and Christine was grateful for the gesture.

"Thanks. You're a really nice guy," she said, not sure how awkwardly the last sentence would be received. It wasn't like she'd known him long enough to make such a character judgment, but he definitely _seemed _like a nice guy.

"Thanks," Raoul said, taking his eyes off the road (this conversation was not conducive to safe driving) and smiled at her. "You're a nice girl."


	25. Lost In The Wilderness

AN: Auditions! Waiting for auditions is boring as anything, so this will be brief. I had a question or two about the plot, so I figured I'd clarify.  
**Googleeyes: **You were right, the BFA program is connected to the school, but separate from the St. Mary's drama department that offers a Bachelor of Arts degree, rather than a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. The college's drama department is actually quite large, but that's because it will accept anyone, there aren't any auditions required. Erik, Christine, Freddy, Charlotte etc all had to audition to get into the BFA program which is academically monitored by the school, but more connected with regrads to classes, teachers and performance to Memorial Rep than it is to St. Mary's. Does that make sense? So they're all enrolled at the University, but their drama programs are run differently. I could get into the specifics more, if you're interested, just PM me.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_"And where we are headed boy, I couldn't guess but  
Off we go without a warning  
Running as we hit the ground  
Where our future lies a-borning  
Where our hearts are outward bound  
Till one bright and distant morning  
We may stop and look around  
And there in the wilderness  
Finally we'll be found!"_

Everyone in the lobby outside of Rehearsal Room C had gone deadly quiet as soon as Erik began his audition song. It was muffled as all hell through the supposedly sound-proof walls, but no one could mistake the power and absolute beauty of the song. Ahmed glanced around at the stunned faces, the sheet music falling from limp fingers and he allowed himself a small, almost proud smile. It was strategic, that Erik wanted to go first. Scare all the kids who'd come up with something to prove, it was a strategy he whole-heartedly approved of.

Of course, it wasn't _just_ the BA kids who had paused, Christine and Raoul both looked up from where they'd been running monologues and fairly gaped at the door to the rehearsal room. "That's _Erik?_" Raoul asked, eyes comically wide.

"The one and only," Ahmed said smoothly, arranging the pages of his own music. His tone was utterly nonchalant, but inside he was thinking, _That is how you fucking do it, man._

"Wow," Christine said, clearly in just as much shock as Raoul. Ahmed raised an eyebrow at that, hadn't she heard him sing before? But no, she hadn't attended any company bonfires yet, where Erik was always guaranteed to show his inner George Harrison, whip out a guitar and start singing. But, no, she wouldn't have heard him bust out the vocal chords before and so her shock was understandable. "That's...wow, I wish we could hear him, like, _well_."

Ahmed shrugged, "Well, once we're rehearsing, you'll hear him once a day. You get used to it after a while." Yeah, total lie. He doubted anyone could really get used to Erik's voice, but it was a believable lie. For a minute there he considered telling her that after a while you'd get _sick_ of Erik's voice, but that was impossible to believe. Sure, he might wish that Erik stopped talking, but if he just sang his many diatribes against the world, Ahmed would probably be more patient with him.

"He's no Hugh Panaro," one of the BA majors muttered to a friend of hers, whose response was only to look at the door of the audition room and swallow nervously. Indeed, none of the guys who'd turned up seemed to have the balls to say anything now that they realized how stiff the competition was.

Charlotte, bless her heart, had balls enough for everyone. "Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that, sweetie," she said with a big grin on her face. The girl looked as if she dearly wanted to think of a retort, but for the life of her couldn't come up with anything. A couple of kids, after conversing amongst themselves for a few minutes actually got up and left the building, sheet music and all.

"That's three down," Charlotte observed, watching the boy's retreating backsides with nothing but professional interest. "I guess, what, that's another twenty delusional fucktards to go?"

"Charlotte, simmer down," Armand said. "They can't help it."

"Can't help _what?_" the girl asked, finding her voice again.

"Can't help that the only person they think has a comparable voice is the Vampire Lestat," Armand said coolly. "Then again, you might as easily have gone with Drew Sarich, so I guess it's all the same."

Evidently the girl wasn't entirely sure how to take that. It was probably _meant_ to be an insult, but she couldn't figure out what it was or how to appropriately respond. In truth, Ahmed wasn't really positive what Armand meant by his comment, but he didn't have to. All he had to do was smirk quietly to himself as Erik entered the lobby, a completely satisfied expression on his face.

"God, I'm glad I got that out of the way," he said, sitting down beside Ahmed on the bench. It was perfect, his tone was just loud enough to hear, but quiet enough not to arouse suspicion of playacting. "I was really nervous, I mean, I know what I'm up against, I'm just glad it's over." Unless you knew Erik really well, as Ahmed did, you'd definitely think the relief in his voice was genuine, but he could discern the glimmer of mischief in his light hazel eyes.

Playing along perfectly, Ahmed added, "Yeah, I think...Freddy's up right after me. I am _so _glad that I'm not going before him, I mean, no offense man, you're decent, but Freddy..."

"Oh, dude," Erik said knowingly. "_Freddy._"

And another five people, one girl with the group this time, made their way hastily out the door. Fifteen to go. The fact that Freddy was in a cold sweat in the bathroom trying to get over his nerves that inevitably flared up around audition time was not something the remaining kids needed to be informed of.

The two bitches from the coffee shop were sitting very close together, quite far removed from the group. One of the BA posse was in there now, warbling her way through "I Don't Know How to Love Him," but the sound didn't carry nearly as well as Erik's voice did, so it was hard to tell how well she was doing. "Whatever," they could hear the blonde one saying to her friend. "It's not like we're going up against him, we just have to beat out the girls and I can tell you _right_ now, the fat one? Not going to be a problem."

Being that Christine had a boy-chest, Sorelli looked to weight the same amount as Blonde Bitch, Meg looked like an undernourished ten-year-old and Jamie could squeeze into a size 0 if she _really_ thought hard about it, there was only one person they could be talking about. Charlotte looked up for a long moment and really thought about whether replying would be worth her time. In the end she decided against it, though a pink flush rose in her cheeks.

Erik, on the other hand, was not so willing to let shit like that go. "Are you fucking kidding me?" he asked, not bothering to keep his voice down now. He would have gotten up from the bench had Ahmed not grabbed his leg in a restraining manner. That didn't stop him talking, however. "Please, tell me, I'm dying to know, what power do you think you have that you can just walk in here and act like that? Really, do tell, because I honestly can't work it out."

"Erik," Charlotte said warningly, shaking her head. "Don't. She clearly has self esteem problems, I don't need you to ride in on a white horse for me."

The Curly Haired girl smirked and gave a toss of the aforementioned locks haughtily. "Yeah, since she, you know, _ate_ the horse." It was a lame remark and surely she knew it the moment it came out of her mouth.

"She's not even fat!" Raoul exclaimed from his corner, clearly bewildered by the female bitterness in the room. Everyone looked up at that outburst, but Raoul was his steadfast in his stance. "What?" he asked, his voice rising an octave to really demonstrate how indignant he was. "She's not! What about her is fat? Nothing. You're just being mean for no reason."

"Whatever," Blonde Bitch replied, folding her arms moodily.

Charlotte sighed even _more_ moodily and made her way right over to where the majority of the BFA kids had squestered themselves. "Okay, boys, here's the scoop. It's very sweet of you to defend my honor and cellulite against that bitch, but let me say _again_, I don't need it. I know I'm better than that cunt, and I'm going to prove in, like, five minutes or so, so just cool it."

Erik had the good sense to mutter an apology that sounded like 'sorry,' but Raoul, used to taking up the defense against unreasonable bullies (being named 'Raoul' does that to a kid), still wanted to lead the charge against hate. "But...but..." he sputtered incoherently. "She shouldn't get away with saying that! It's just...rude. And you're not fat."

Smiling, Charlotte ruffled Raoul's blonde locks like he was a good little puppy. "You're a sweetie. And she's not going to get away with it. I'm going to rock my audition and she'll look at the cast list tomorrow and she'll cry and then deny herself food like the good little anorexic that she is and that will be my sweet, sweet revenge. So you don't have to worry about it, honey." And with another head pat she was back to sitting near the rehearsal room, studying her lyrics again.

If Raoul was going to apologize, he didn't get the chance. Tim came out, red pen in hand, scratching something off a piece of paper and informed the boy that they were ready for him. With a rustle of sheet music, Raoul got up and followed Tim into the room, glancing quickly over his shoulder at Charlotte before he closed the door behind him.

Their plan was almost brought to ruin by Raoul's emotional outburst and gallant attempt at chivalry. Something had to be done to salvage their aura of cool superiority. Something. But what?

Playing her part like the good little thespian she was, Meg looked up at Christine with wide, nervous eyes and said, "G-gosh, Christine, I'm so nervous. What if I mess up?"

Having never witnessed such insecurity from Meg before, Christine was momentarily taken aback. Then she thought for a moment...Meg really wasn't the sort of person to use the word 'gosh' in all seriousness. A quick glance around the room confirmed that their group had a small audience and _then_ the brilliance of Erik's plan hit her. _Oh, _he was good. "Oh, don't worry, Meg," Christine said, sliding to the floor to give her friend a bracing sideways hug. "You'll be fine! I mean, when you auditioned for..._High School Musical 3_, you were freaking out, but now you're on the Disney channel!"

"Only in the back," Meg moaned, burying her face in Christine's shoulder to hide the smile that threatened after she saw the look that crossed Erik's face at the mention of _High School Musical._

"Don't worry about it," Christine said, patting Meg's shoulder supportively. "You'll have your SAG card before you know it. And you're a featured dancer in _Fame!_"

"And you know," Sorelli piped up with a wicked gleam in her eye, "if you didn't have those moral objections to having an abortion onscreen, you could have been a lead."  
Meg's shoulders quaked in what looked like sobs, but was really restrained laughter. "I kn-know!" she wailed convincingly. "But I just couldn't do that to the imaginary fetus. It-it has _rights_, you know."

Four more students got up and walked out of the lobby without a backwards glance. Tim entered at that moment, sign-up sheet in hand , Raoul at his heels, and a faintly puzzled look on his face. "It seems that we've had some withdrawals," he said, and his gaze landed suspiciously on Erik who, for his part, looked all innocence. "I've got to bump a few people up. Christine, are you ready to go or do you need more time?"

Giving Meg another quick squeeze, Christine smiled brightly at Tim and chirruped, "I'm ready!"

"Break a leg, Christine!" Raoul said enthusiastically.

"Don't try _too_ hard," Erik said just before she followed Tim into the audition room. "You don't want to blow your voice out before the _Ragtime_ revival starts rehearsing."


	26. I Hope I Get It

AN: Bit of a break between the previous chapter and this one, life got a bit hectic and I apologize for the wait...and the quality of this chapter. It's not quite as solid as I hoped it would be, but really, there's only so much that can be said about the posting of a cast list. Sorry to anyone who was hoping for some BA/BFA drama (and no, to anyone who's curious, the rivalry between BAs and BFAs, in my experience is NEVER this bad), but stay tuned, for drama will be afoot anyway! I've got big plans for future chapters, big plans! And some developing romance, though I won't say between which characters...

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_God, I hope I get it.  
I hope I get it.  
How many people does he need?  
God, I hope I get it.  
I hope I get it.  
How many boys, how many girls?  
_

_Look at all the people!  
At all the people!  
How many people does he need?  
How many boys, how many girls?  
How many people does he...?_

_-A Chorus Line_

Anticipating that this audition would be run just like the previous one she suffered to gain admission to St. Mary's, Christine handed her sheet music over to the accompanist. This gentleman was much more polite than Erik had been, he was a thin man with a shaved head and thick eyebrows, darkish complexion pointing to a Mediterranean heritage. He smiled as he introduced himself, displaying brilliant white teeth, "Hi there, Christine, I'm Gaspard, I'll be the musical director of this little tragedy."

Christine giggled, perhaps inappropriately and enthusiastically replied, "Hi! It's nice to meet you!" Assuming that preliminary greetings were over, since, besides Gaspard, it was just her and Tim in there, along with a slightly unwashed looking stage manager who made no move to introduce himself, Christine stood on the red performance X taped onto the floor, but Tim surprised her by asking a question before she began her monologue.

"What the fuck is going on out there?"

Yeah, that threw her for a bit of a loop. "What do you mean?" Christine asked, honestly confused, since she thought her friends were doing really well. Tim sounded...really pissed, actually and she could only conclude that his BFA kids were somehow letting him down. Oh, crap, what if _none_ of them got into the show? Oh, _crap_, they would be so screwed and they'd probably end up costuming those horrible people, like that girl who called Charlotte fat and -

Tim's sigh broke her doom-and-gloom reverie. "I would really like to know why I had twenty-five names on my sign-in sheet and now I'm down to, let's see, seventeen actually auditioning." Blue eyes pierced Christine's soul over the thin gold frames of the director's eyeglasses. "I'd actually love to know why I have twenty-five people auditioning at _all_ when I only intend to cast the ten of you. This evening is turning into quite an extraordinary waste of mine and everyone else's time. I'm just wondering what possessed Erik to turn my theatre into a madhouse yet _again_."

"It wasn't Erik," Christine said defensively, actually she felt a little offended on Erik's behalf. Why did everyone seem to have it out for Erik? Sure, he was a little impulsive and weird, but it wasn't like he plotted people's doom or seriously sought to harm anyone. He was eccentric. There was a decided dearth of eccentric people in their generation and Christine was proud to know one. "Seriously," she added, off Tim's disbelieving look. "It wasn't, some of the other kids were at the Bistro and they were talking about auditions and they were just...mean. Okay, yeah, Erik said stuff to them, but they _started_ it."

Ah, yes, the old 'they started it' defense. Tim mightily resisted the urge to roll his eyes and failed. Really, these kids, kids though they may be, were in _college_ now. Just because someone said something they didn't like, did _not_ mean that they had free reign to behave badly themselves. Whatever happened to taking the high road? Then again, he was raised at the tail end of the Atomic Age, so who was he to talk?

"I am not interested in hearing about who started what," Tim said, holding up a hand for forestall any more rambling defenses from Miss Daee. "I just want to be sure that none of you are doing anything that might get the department in trouble. The school always threatens theatrical assimilation when they feel students of your ilk have gotten too big for your britches. Please tell me Charlotte hasn't called anyone a cunt yet."

Christine blanched visibly when Tim use the C U Next Tuesday word. It was one thing for an adult college professor to say 'shit,' or even 'fuck' and quite another for them to use _such_ strong language in front of a student. She'd actually been a little nervous when Charlotte said it earlier in the evening. Little did Christine know that this particular genital euphemism was Charlotte's favorite swear word. The next few months would lead to a great deal more blanching.

But Christine was all ignorance and innocence tonight and could scarcely bring herself to stutter, "Um, no, I mean, _yes_, she did say...that word. To a girl. About a girl, not to her, I mean, she said the word _near_ a girl and about her, but not _to_ her. But the girl called her fat first - "

And there was the hand again. "Christine, what did I just say about that?"

"Sorry. But no one's doing anything to them, like insulting people's moms or telling people to leave. Erik and everyone are just kind of...exaggerating resumes." The ghost of a smile turned the corners of Christine's mouth upward a bit as she added, "Isn't that the best way to have a successful stage career? Make most of it up?" That was what her dad always said, anyway.

Evidently, he and Tim were of one mind in that regard. "Touche, Mademoiselle Daee, touche," he replied, exchanging a significant look with Gaspard over her head. "Alright, honey, let's get this over with. Oh, wait, out of curiosity, who _are_ you playing in _Ragtime_?"

Smiling in full now, Christine replied without hesitation, "Oh, I'm one of the ensemble rich people! I don't have to dance, I just have to pose. And act nervous when I see immigrants and African Americans."

"Spoken like a true WASP," Tim said approvingly. "I'll be sad to lose you. Okay, I think I'll just ask for a song from you tonight, you've monologued enough for the evening."

It was a great relief, even if removing the monologue portion of her audition made Christine feel slightly paranoid – but then, what _didn't _make her feel paranoid? Did Tim think she was a bad actress and didn't want to torture himself? There was a real infusion of nerves and regret as she sang, assuming that she had disappointed Tim horrifically, but apparently that served only to augment her performance since Tim was smiling in a satisfied way at the end.

"Beautiful job," he said, jotting something down on the legal pad in front of him. "Alright, Christine, you're all set for the night, tell Charlotte to come in after you."

Obediently, Christine grabbed her sheet music and bid everyone goodnight – even the sketchy stage manager who looked right over her head when she addressed him. Charlotte was up and off the floor almost before Christine finished her sentence and she made her way over to the group. "What'd I miss?" she asked eagerly, sitting down on the floor between Meg and Sorelli.

"Four more girls just got up and left!" Meg squealed triumphantly, throwing her arms around Christine. "You rock! We rock! We all rock! We are totally fighting the proletariat!"

Erik cocked his head to the side at that enthusiastically inexplicable pronouncement. "How?" he asked, evidently puzzled.

Meg blushed deeply red at the ears, as she tended to do when she proclaimed things or said words that she did not quite know the meaning of. "Uh, that's a very good question," she replied. "And I will answer it. Later. When I so choose to. Peon." She knew what _that_ word meant. More or less.

"Did Tim give you the third degree?" Armand asked, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.

Christine confirmed that, yes, Tim did give her the third degree and related the audition incident at least three times since one person always got up to perform during a crucial part of the story. It was a way to pass the time until midnight anyway. No one had any early classes in the morning and Tim, Erik explained, was not one to dick around with the cast list. Once he sat through auditions, he usually had the entire show cast in an hour. All told, after the bravado and blustering and general douchbaggery of the BFA alliance, only about five members of the BA rabble actually wound up going in to audition. The odds being stacked ridiculously high in their favor, no one could even think of sleeping before they found out how the show had been cast.

Auditions were over and done with by eleven and soon, their little group of organized misfits were the only people left in the building. Conversation lulled a bit, then rose as various members of their troupe took great pleasure in re-enacting a few of the snarkier fights that broke out over the course of the evening. As it turned out, Raoul could do a devastating sassy black girl impression, which even had Erik commenting that he could give Wesley Snipes a run for his money in _To Wong Foo._

At long last the stage manager emerged and tacked the cast list on the cork board outside the box office. His greasy hair was covered by a knit cap and he didn't say a word or look at any of them before walking swiftly out of the theatre and disappearing into the darkness beyond the door. No one paid him any mind though, within seconds there was a ten-person rush on an eight by eleven inch piece of paper.

**GODSPELL CAST LIST**

**(Thank you all who auditioned!)**

**Jesus – **Frederick Richard (Save the People, All For the Best, Alas for You, We Beseech Thee)

**John the Baptist – **Raoul Chaney (Prepare Ye)

**Jean Paul Satre/Judas Iscariot – **Erik Theroux (It's All for the Best, On the Willows)

**L. Ron Hubbard/Female 1 – **Sarah Sorelli (Turn Back, O Man)

**Jonathan Edwards/Female 2 – **Charlotte Mendoza (Day By Day)

**Leonardo DaVinci/Female 3 – **Christine Daee (O Bless the Lord, My Soul)

**Socrates/Female 4 – **Margaret Giry (Learn Your Lessons Well)

**Thomas Aquinas/Female 5 – **Jamie Jameson (By My Side)

**Galileo Galilei/Male 2 – **Armand Moncharmin (All Good Gifts)

**Marianne Williamson/Male 3 – **Ahmed Yari (Beautiful City)

Some moments of silence greeted this list. Was anyone surprised that none of the BA majors actually made it in? Perhaps, a few of them, but Erik was at least aware of the fact that this was all one giant mindfuck. He was actually amused that he'd gotten his classmates to play along so easily, usually they were a little reluctant to join him when he decided to go people-baiting (like bear-baiting without the threat of dismemberment).

There was general relief, of course. Freddy actually let out a yelp of relief and delight when he saw his name listed as the Big JC. He separated from the group to engage in a private, happy dance of joy. For a solid minute or two, all was well amongst the BFA tribe. There were sounds of merry making and supportive hugs and tousling of hair. Of course, as generally happened once all the frivolities were over and done with, there was some complaining to be done as well.

"So...I die in the first act?" Raoul said, wracking his brain as he tried to think of exactly which song John the Baptist slipped offstage on.

Jamie rolled her eyes. "Oh, _please_," she said, clearly not pitying Raoul at all for his early death. "At least you get a song. I get, like, half a song. Not even."

"Uh, yeah," Ahmed said, giving Jamie a slight shove into the cast list which he regarded with mild consternation. "But you get to be Thomas Aquinas. Who the hell is Marianne Williamson? I've never even heard of her. Couldn't I be...Gertrude Stein or something. She's kind of like a philosopher."

"I'm L. Ron Hubbard!" Sorelli squeed. Yes. Honestly squeed. "I'm SO stoked! I told Tim, I said before, I wanted to be L. Ron Hubbard, I didn't care if I came on and just did the L. Ron Hubbard bit and left, I just wanted to be L. Ron Hubbard!"

Charlotte contemplated for several long seconds whether she should disillusion Sorelli now or later. Given that she was stuck singing her least favorite song in the entire show, she opted for now. "You do realize that no one will know whether you are L. Ron Hubbard or not, right? Not unless we're wearing t-shirts that say what philosopher we are and I hope not. That's hella tacky, I'll protest."

And thus, the battle of the century, BA vs BFA was solved by a simple cast list, firmly establishing the sanctity of the BFA company for this semester, at least. And all their trials, all hardship and all the plotting of yesterday flew out the window so that they could get down to the thing that theatre majors did best: complaining about the size of their parts.

"Seriously?" Ahmed asked, in a sightly louder tone this time, endeavoring to be heard over Freddy's continuous whoops of joy. "Does anyone know who Marianne Williamson is? Was? Is she still alive? Or is she a dude? Like, one of those old Englishmen whose names are like girls names? Anyone? Guys?"


	27. Wrestle With The Devil

AN: It's been a very productive past few days for me, writing-wise. I don't know if any of it's any good, but I have been writing a LOT. Hopefully it's passably decent. Lots of Chester this chapter, I am sorry if you were hoping for more of the kids being wacky, but there will be plenty of that in a bit, don't worry. I think Chester's a fun guy myself, he's like an Jewish-African American, gay Stanley Tucci in my brain, if that makes any kind of sense, which I'm sure it doesn't, but that's perfectly alright. I will warn my readership that everyone's playing fast and loose with the topics of race, sexuality and religion, so if you're sensitive about those topics...well, you probably should have stopped reading some time ago. Probably around the night of the Tony Awards.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_You gotta be prepared to wrestle,  
Wrestle with the devil in a heartbeat  
Before the moment is past.  
You gotta be prepared, you gotta be prepared  
To wrestle with the devil in a heartbeat  
Or it could be your very last!_

_No matter what you do, he's coming after you  
So wrestle with the devil till you break him.  
Until he's gone from your head.  
You gotta face the test,  
The devil doesn't rest!  
So wrestle with the devil till you take him,  
Until he's finally, cold and dead!_

_-Whistle Down the Wind_

Contrary to popular belief, it was not all fun and games at Memorial. There was hard work to be done, between auditions and stressing about auditions and plotting the downfall of relative non-entities, classes to be taken. One of their most taxing required classes was THE 250, Intro to Costume Construction, with it's lab component once a week THE 251: Intro to Life as a Costume Bitch. It was in this lab that pants were hemmed, shirts were steamed and jackets were repaired. Madeline, playing someone suffering from undiagnosed bi-polar disorder, could really do a number to a vintage hippie dress and Freddy was currently replacing three buttons that she had popped off during a particularly raucous mental breakdown.

Freddy was very proud of himself, he'd just learned the correct procedure for sewing buttons and as such was being a little enthusiastic. Chester was, ostensibly the teacher of the class, but once he had the kids started on projects, he just let them be and worked on the projects that needed his immediate attention, such as costuming ten kids for _Godspell_. It was kind of a big deal and he was basically working on this by himself, so forgive him if he neglected to tell little Freddy that it wasn't necessary to double up two yards of thread to secure one button. What were a few spools of thread compared to a few moments of relative peace?

All the children were present and accounted for at the moment and that was all he needed, Erik and Ahmed were dying fabric, Christine, Meg and Sorelli were re-organizing the racks and Armand, Charlotte, Raoul and Freddy were doing various tasks necessary to the running of a show in production. Raoul was not sewing, of course, Chester didn't want to risk splattering the mens' shirts with blood, so he was just pressing and steaming trousers, since, seriously, how much trouble could he get into there?

So now Chester was in his office, contemplating a pair of plaid trousers that he'd obtained from Goodwill a little over a week ago. They would fit Freddy, he was sure, the boy was a beanpole, anything could fit that kid, the hem just might need to be let out a bit...hmm. Ah well, his class, his time, if he wanted to use it to for fittings, then he was perfectly within his rights to do that.

"Freddy!" he called, sticking his head out of his office door as he gathered up what he needed to do a proper fitting, "I'm going to need your legs in a minute, so just finish up over there, okay?" All the tools he needed were a box of pins and Mr Puffy, an amazing little creation for the overworked seamstress that marked with a line of chalk the line where a hem should lay. It was a beautiful, entirely necessary creation that made his life a great deal easier.

Entering the sewing room, Chester saw that Freddy had not set aside his work and was squinting hard through his reading glasses at the knots he was attempting to make to secure the last in his crooked line of buttons. "Come on, babycakes, up and at 'em," Chester said, pulling Freddy bodily up from the chair, one hand under his arm as he dragged him up out of the seat.

"But my buttons!" he protested in utmost futility. Chester only shook his head sadly.

"Oh, honey, they're just a lost cause."

Once he had Freddy's skinny little butt into his pants, he admired the fit around the waist, of course, the little bitch could wear _anything_. Except, of course, the pants were too short, just as he knew they would be. This was why he was paid the big bucks, because he knew when freaky teenage kids with their Human Growth Hormone-rich diets would be too tall for second hand pants. "Put the shirt on too," Chester said, kneeling on the floor and expertly ripping the hem out of the cuffs with one mighty swish of his mighty seam ripper. "I want to see how it looks together."

Freddy obliged, throwing his own shirt on the ground as he replaced it with the costume piece, just like the lazy little teenager that he was. Ah kids. Gotta love him. He felt more like a maid when Erik stayed with Tim and him than he did when he was cleaning up the dressing rooms after a particularly bad performance. As he worked on fixing the trousers, his sharp ears picked up the clacking of low-heel DSW boots and he knew Charlotte had entered the room. Goddammit, was he grading these kids on their ability to stand around and look pretty or were they actually going to get some work done?

It wasn't a bad outfit, if Chester said so himself. They were going with a kind of grunge theme for the show, nice and simple and cheap, very early-90s. The set was going to look like the front steps of the state house, complete with garbage cans and leftover protest signs, crap like that. They were going for minimalist, which meant they really wanted to get the show up and running for less than three-hundred, that wasn't counting the rights, so he was cutting corners where he could, like sewing red scrap fabric to a blue t-shirt Freddy had on in the shape of the Superman logo. Stealing? Nah, more like borrowing. Creatively borrowing.

Charlotte squinted appraisingly at the costume for a long minute before commenting on the emblematic 'S', "It looks kinda like a five."

If looks could kill, she would have been a pile of smoldering ashes, burned and sticking to the costume shop floor. "It looks _hand-crafted_," Chester rephrased delicately. "Home-made. Like, one day you were all, 'Hey, I'm the Son of God, let's do some sewing.'"

Squirming slightly under the not-so-positive scrutiny, Freddy looked down at his chest and said, "I think Jesus is more of an iron-on decal kinda guy. So I'm not wearing Victor Garber's sweet rainbow pants?"

"You will wear plaid and you will _like_ it," Chester said, holding the hose from Mr Puffy threateningly in Freddy's face. Yeah, he'd steal the S, but the pants were _all _his. Well, not technically, they came from the store, but he bought them.

"Rainbow suspenders, maybe?" he pressed on hopefully.

There was a long pause as Chester contemplated the notion. "Rainbow suspenders..._maybe_," he said, really drawing out the 'maybe' portion of the sentence. "We already have people breathing down our necks about potential blasphemy, let's not bring the homophobes out of the woodwork by turning you into a float in the Gay Pride Parade."

Freddy looked scandalized at the notion, "Are you saying I look fat?"

"You look..." Chester paused, searching for the right word. "...Christlike." And coming from a black Jew, the meaning of that particular statement was about as ambiguous as it could be. Chester himself didn't have a very strong visual image of The Christ within his mind, but his Jesus totally wore plaid and yellow Converse. His Jesus was an awesome Jesus.

"Oh yeah, big gay Jesus," Freddy said sarcastically, squinting at his image in the full-length mirror. "_That's_ going to go over well."

"Hush," Chester said, blowing a puff of blue chalk in Freddy's face. "We'll be fine, no riots, just a peaceful little show."

"Oh yeah, really peaceful," snorted a mellifluous voice from far above their heads. Erik was now leaning in the doorway, peeling dark purple latex gloves from his hands. "Have you read the latest issue of _Our Times_?"

"Oh, please, honey" was the scathing reply given as Chester adjusted the hem to make certain that it was even. The newspaper Erik referred to the was the bi-weekly campus rag that the Journalism Department put together. It was a piece of crap whose Arts section consisted entirely of reviews written about the music videos of Lady Gogo or the latest pop trainwreck to grace the pages of _Entertainment Weekly. _"I'm not an idiot, so no. Why?"

"Because if you had," the brat went on in an annoyingly superior tone, pulling up a chair, "you would have known that the campus chastity league or some other such nonsense has performed a hostile takeover of the editorial page, decrying our little show as being disrespectful to the Bible and God and all creation."

"Fuck 'em," was Chester's susinct reply through a mouthful of pins.

"What are they complaining about?" Charlotte asked, sliding onto the floor to listen to Erik's tale of woe. That was it, Chester had totally lost control of his class. Anarchy ran rampant, there were riots and dying babies in the streets. Whatever, his class, if he wanted anarchy, there would be anarchy.

Erik sighed grandly, leaning back in the chair, balancing precariously on the back legs. "I don't know, some of them are complaining that Jesus was black in one production - "

"And that's not a concern," Chester said, not removing his eyes from his pinning, "because you kiddies are all white as snow - "

"I'm ethnic!" exclaimed Charlotte, red curls flying about indignantly. "I'm third-generation!"

"And I'm second, on my mother's side," their instructor retorted, rolling his eyes. "Her extended family perished in concentration camps and my father's people were brought here on ships against their wills. Let's not play this game. Anyway, I thought only people south of the Mason/Dixon line complained about black Jesus. Next."

"Also, something about that verse in 'Light of the World,' the one..." and Erik sang a verse, making everyone snap to attention, regardless of their various levels of distraction. "'_We all need help to feel fine – let's have some wine_.' Because apparently, Jesus and friends didn't drink wine."

"'Scuse me?" Freddy asked. "What about the wedding at Cana? Jesus fucking _made_ wine. For fuck's sake, they were so bombed at the wedding that they ran _out _of wine and he bitched at his mom, so we all know Jesus was three sheets to the wind."

"Hey, don't shoot the messenger," Erik raised his hands defensively. "I'm just telling you what's circulating around campus, apparently the Christian right is getting antsy about the show."

Charlotte rolled her eyes so hard that it was practically audible. "Oh please, the Christian right can go fuck itself."

"They don't," Chester said. "Fuck, that is. That's why they're wound so tight. I don't get you little Catholics, in Judaism, when you screw up you're unclean for a few days, then they let bygones be bygones, hop in the mikvah, you're fine. With Catholics? Jerk off once and it's fire and brimstone all the way home." Shaking his head sadly, he concluded, "Bound to cause trouble chickadees."

"Hey, not sure if you've noticed, we're all really _bad_ Catholics," the young lady on the floor said. "I mean, we never miss a pride parade and we understand the merits of safe sex."

"Or are we all just really _good_ Catholics?" Erik, the self-affirmed atheist, asked with some great air of mysticism about him. "No, think about it, Jesus ate with prostitutes and tax collectors, right? They were his posse. So, the modern equivalent would be...help me out here, guys."

"Queers and unwed teenage mothers," Chester supplied, rising from the floor and putting Mr Puffy back on the shelf where he belonged. Erik smiled in a self-satisfied manner.

"Exactly...well, except for the unwed teenage mothers. If they had been taught the merits of safe sex, that wouldn't have happened."

"So...queers, unwed teenage mothers and Planned Parenthood volunteers?"

"Sounds good to me."

And to conclude the blasphemy hour, Freddy plucked at his #5 Superman t-shirt and asked uncomfortably, "Okay, can I take this off now?" Critical discussion of the mother Church always made Freddy, the ex-altar boy feel supremely uncomfortable.

Looking him over critically, Chester nodded after a moment and said, "Yeah, sure, just give the pants to Armand and tell him to sew along the line I made – try not to stab yourself in the foot while you do that, okay honey?"

"Will do!" Freddy declared with a chipperness that he did not feel as he disappeared into the changing room to put his real clothes on. Turning to the other two vagabonds in the room with him, Chester raised a brow and asked, "Don't you kids have some work to do?"

Charlotte and Erik _did_ have work to do and so after some grumbling and general stalling returned to their posts. On the way back to their respective stations, Charlotte grabbed Erik's arm and looked up at him with a trace of worry on her face. "Uh, those religious weirdos who were writing to the paper, do you really think they're going to be a problem."

Grinning and showing off his crooked teeth (Erik had been given the option of braces in middle school, but he declined, having enough problems to deal with), her classmate shook his head and replied, "Not likely. I just wanted to get away from the fumes for a while. They're just hysterics, I'm sure they'll calm down and forget the whole thing in a week. Trust me."


	28. Little Things You Do Together

AN: Another long chapter, that is both character-build AND plot advancing! I'm proud of me. I also wrote the majority of the chapter while watching _The Strangers_ on HBO, so forgive me if it's a little twisted in places. Thanks for the reviews! I love getting them and knowing what parts of the story people are responding to best. I hope you like this chapter, I'm oddly fond of it, myself.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright. Apologies beforehand to all country music fans!

* * *

_It's the little things you do together,  
Do together,  
Do together,  
That make perfect relationships.  
The hobbies you pursue together,  
Savings you accrue together,  
Looks you misconstrue together..._

_It's the little things you share together,  
Swear together,  
Wear together,  
That make perfect relationships.  
The concerts you enjoy together,  
Neighbors you annoy together..._

_-Company_

Because Erik was not psychic, he supposed that he could be forgiven for reassuring Charlotte earlier that the religious enthusiasts on campus would not be a problem. On the contrary, they were a _big_ problem, and part of a problem that was magnified by the appearance of some youth ministers. A small group of fundamentalist Christians who traveled around the country, wielding acoustic guitars and signs that condemned the sinful to eternal damnation. According to one of their six-foot signs that Erik had glimpsed on his way to Latin, the sinful included: Homosexuals (big surprise there), Un-Submissive Women (who knew that was a word?), Jews, Fornicators, Witches, Democrats and, weirdest of all, Mormons.

The Mormon population of Rhode Island was so small as to be virtually non-existent, but the Democratic populace was alive and well and there was a significant group of protesters who turned up at their little liberal arts college to angrily shout over their acoustic guitars of hatred. This was not surprising, these wackos turned up every year at college campuses around America. Arguably they were there to save souls, but mostly they just got people indignant.

Still, there was something odd about this trip. This trip, they didn't just have angry pagan Democrats rallying against them, they actually had a small group of kids who were rallying _for_ them. Apparently organized by some extreme members of the Campus Republicans, there was a tiny group of supporters who screamed right back at the counterprotesters, making up for their lack of numbers and common sense by overcompensating with volume.

In an utterly necessary and manly way, Erik was providing himself as a testosterone-infused escort for four of his young lady friends as they made their way to The Burger Hut for lunch. And by that, he meant that Meg texted him after his Latin class got out and asked if he wanted to meet them on the quad and go to lunch. But still. He was escorting them and he had more testosterone than the ladies, so it was almost an accurate description of his place among them.

It was a bit of a hassle, finding the young ladies among the crowds that had amassed on the quad. Erik was jostled from side to side by people holding up signs espousing their different political philosophies made from torn notebook paper, though a few people did run to the local CVS and buy poster board and sharpies to make proper signs. Trying to blend in as well as possible, Erik slouched and dug his hands deeply into the pockets of his black trench coat. It was a bright day, so he opted for a hat. Erik liked to think that he was cool enough to pull off a fedora and a trench, but in truth, no one was really, not in this day and age. The genes necessary for wearing a fedora/trench combo well had been largely bred out of humanity by the mid-1950s.

So concerned was he with looking nonchalant in his film noir garb, that Erik completely neglected to pay attention to the conversation the girls at his side were engaging in.

"We should just walk by them holding hands," Meg said to Christine, a look of utter disgust on her face as they gave the mob scene in the middle of the quad a wide berth as they made their way to lunch. "That would totally freak them out."

"Oh, God, I know, right?" Christine shook her head. Sure, she'd been brought up Catholic, but the pastors at the church her father took her to had all been very liberal. She'd been brought up thinking that the greatest commandments were to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Wacky stuff. Getting a mischievous glint in her eye, she turned to Meg and said, "You know what would _really_ freak them out?"

The thought occurred to Meg only a moment before the question was put to her. "If we made out?"

Actually, Christine was going to say, 'If we had our hands in each other's back pockets,' but that option worked...um, in a really extreme way that she wasn't expecting, but the challenge had been set and Sorelli let out a war whoop of encouragement, so it wasn't like she could back down. Christine had vowed to give into peer pressure every opportunity she got and these people were now her peers.

"Ohmygod, Charlotte!" Sorelli exclaimed excitedly, grabbing her BFF's hands, already way ahead of the game in frightening the evangelists. Certainly her taking the name of the Lord her God in vain (and as one word, no less), was cutting it close enough to eternal damnation. "_We _should make out!"

Charlotte extricated her hand from Sorelli's with a dismissive shake. "No thanks, I'm not a lesbian."

Shock was painted thickly over Sorelli's face as she looked down at her cold and lonely hand. "Whoa, homophobia much?"

Rolling her eyes, Charlotte elaborated, "Okay, I'm not going to, like, exploit gayness to make some stupid point. If we retaliate, we just make these people think they have something to fight against, we add more fuel to the fire and it's ridiculous."

"_They're _already ridiculous," Meg insisted. "How are we making things worse? We're just making a stand for...love and harmony and all that stuff."

Evidently, Charlotte didn't agree. "I don't think we need to provoke them," she said flatly. "Especially since none of us are gay."

"I'm bi!" Who else, but Sorelli?

"Uh, no, you're try-sexual," Charlotte said, her tone turning slightly nasty as she rebuffed that exclamation. "You'll try anything once and don't deny it." One glance at her phone had her rolling her eyes and hitching her backpack higher on her shoulders. "I'll see you chicas later, I'm going to get something to eat. Have your orgy if you want, I don't care - "

"Did someone mention an orgy?" An oddly excited voice interrupted from behind them. Freddy, of course, coming back from lunch with Ahmed and Raoul, who Freddy was not entirely convinced was straight and decided to crack the great mystery of Raoul's sexuality the old-fashioned way: by flirting shamelessly over burritos and fries, trying to get the other boy to blush and flirt back. The blush he'd managed to procure almost immediately, but there was nary a blip on the flirtation radar.

Giving Freddy a quick hug and kiss on the cheek (being that they hadn't seen each other since _yesterday_, affectionate overtures must be made), Charlotte shot him down quickly and said, "Ovaries only, no sausages at this festival, sorry honey. Meg, Christine and Sorelli want to take down the right-wing loonies by the power of their combined saliva. I'm bowing out. Graciously. Peace, kids." And with that she was gone.

"So you girls are going to make out?" Raoul asked, looking not so much titillated as he did a little squicked. "Why?"

"Um..." Meg stalled, suddenly unable to recall why she thought that was a good idea in the first place. "You know....I don't...it was Christine's idea!"

Half a dozen pairs of curious eyes on her did not make Christine feel remotely secure in prompting this idea – _prompting_, yes, because it most definitely was _not_ her idea. She just wanted her right hand to get friendly with Meg's rear end as a fuck you to prejudice, she didn't want to swap spit with her roomie. "Totally not my idea," was the rather lame denial Christine came up with.

"I'll make out with one of you," Erik said, looking boredly between Ahmed and Freddy - pointedly _not_ at Raoul who he just assumed would not be up for it. "You know. To make a point."

Christine fairly gaped at Erik, looking him up and down in what, to her eyes, looked like semi-goth trappings. Not really gay. Granted, he was wearing skinny jeans and a tight, long-sleeved black knit shirt, but nothing about him screamed 'NO GIRLS ALLOWED!' Unlike Freddy who was currently wearing a t-shirt with that exact phrase emblazoned on the chest. "Are you gay?" she asked in wonder, having never really thought about the matter of Erik's sexuality in depth before, she'd just sort of assumed that he was straight. Or non-sexual. You know, like a potato. Or something.

Erik's eyes visibly darkened and a small scowl crossed his features. Evidently Christine had broken some sort of taboo, since everyone else was watching Erik warily. Luckily for her, Ahmed chose to bail her out. "He doesn't talk about it," he said, glancing from Erik to Christine as though worried that his friend was going to go apeshit on Christine for bringing up a subject that he didn't like discussing.

"Oh," Christine said, utterly confused. "Um. Sorry."

"No problem," Erik said through gritted teeth, eyes on the ground. Then, looking up abruptly, apparently completely recovered, he locked eyes with Freddy. "So, how about it?"

The fair-haired boy just shrugged. "Yeah, sure," he said, a small smile curving his lips. "I brushed my teeth this morning."

It was a fairly quick, chaste kiss, all told. Freddy just walked up to Erik and tilted his head back as the other boy lowered his head to meet Freddy's lips halfway. There was no tongue, as Meg implied that there would be had she kissed Christine. It was actually kind of sweet, if awkward to witness for the kids standing around while their friends kissed to prove a point. Ahmed actually coughed and looked in the opposite direction, to the outside observer he would appear embarrassed, but he was actually trying to see if their little love-protest was making an impact...

Oh shit.

Erik and Freddy broke apart after only a few seconds. They had just enough uninterrupted time for Freddy's tongue to flick out of his mouth and to remark, "Your lips are really dry," before one of the Jesus Freaks pointed their acoustic guitar and shouted something about devils, fornicators and queers before things got _loud._

The liberal protesters were all smiles, cheering and hollering, while the counterprotesters shouted somehow more loudly, condemning them as exhibitionists and perverts.

Well, no shit. They were actors weren't they?

"Let's get out of here," Christine urged, grabbing hold of Meg's hand and tugging her away from the crowd. No one needed to be told twice. In an instant, all of them began walking quickly away, then jogging, then _running_ toward their cars at the top of campus, lunch entirely forgotten. It wasn't that they needed to run, no one was chasing them, it was always just better to cap off a stupid decision by running away from it.

"Whoo, that was fun," Ahmed declared, leaning against his bus, slightly out of breath. "Hey, how about we abort a baby while having unprotected sex the next time we walk across the quad?"

"Sounds good to me," Erik shot back, lying on the ground next to the car, squinting up at the cloudless sky.

Giggling madly despite being a little winded, Meg added with giddy anticipation, "Ooh! Ooh! Can we support socialism too?"

"And marry each other!" Sorelli shouted, likewise dissolving into hopeless laughter. "Because, you know, Mormons are all about the anti-Godness!"

"That'll be the plan, then," Freddy said. "Marry each other and kill fetuses and...I don't know, eat each other out since that's totally not kosher - "

"Who cares?" Christine asked, finally finding her breath to speak. "Since they don't like the Jewish people either! We'll kill like a dozen birds with one giant rock!"

"No, we can't do that!" Raoul piped up, having run right along with them even though he could have easily blended into the crowd and pretended that he didn't know any of them. This act of solidarity thus proved that Raoul was a totally okay guy. "Because people like that love to hunt. I've seen them on TV. They have deer stands."

For some reason, this was the straw that broke the hilarity camel's back. Even Erik, who usually turned into a complete Grumpy Gus the minute Raoul's name was mentioned rolled over onto his side, laughing so hard that it looked like he was having a small seizure.

"What...the..._fuck_, man?" Ahmed managed, of everyone, always able to hold himself together the best in times of trial and laughter. "What the fuck is a fucking deer stand?"

"I don't know," Raoul confessed, shrugging his shoulders and laughing himself, just because everyone else was laughing. He didn't know what he said that was so funny that it caused everyone to burst into hysterics, but hey, if it won him friendship points, he didn't mind. "I-I think it's like, a chair. In a tree. And you sit in it and shoot deer. Deers. Deer. Whatever, it's a weird redneck thing. I saw it on TV."

"What the fuck TV do you watch?" Ahmed asked, kicking Erik who was screaming laughing like a hyena. Enough was enough, dude, reign it in a little.

"Fucking sick," Erik managed, recovering himself enough to sit upright, though his shoulders were still quaking with laughter. "You are a sick fuck, watching CMT or some shit, Raoul, I mean, seriously."

"I don't remember where I saw it!" the blonde boy maintained defensively. "I don't watch CMT, I don't."

"You do," Erik teased, unrelenting. "You watch CMT and listen to Taylor Swift and you _cried_ when Kanye interrupted her at the VMAs. Fucking cried."

The teasing did not let up, even after they all got in Herbert the Love Bus and drove off to Memorial for their afternoon class. By the time they parked, Erik had accused Raoul of jerking off to Garth Brooks songs while fonding a life-size blow-up doll that looked like Johnny Cash – not the real Johnny Cash, the Joaquin Phoenix version. While still crying over Taylor Swift's interrupted acceptance speech. The imaginary Raoul in Erik's head did a lot of crying.

Being the decent kid he was, Raoul put up with the people-baiting, laughing and occasionally throwing back witty comebacks, but since absurd sex jokes about people you barely knew were the lowest form of wit, there wasn't much Raoul could say in return. He didn't have Erik's callous disregard for the good opinion of others that enabled him to be an ass without fear of the consequences.

"Erik, cool it," Ahmed said finally as they entered the lobby. "I might ask you how you know who all these country people are. You sure you weren't getting your rocks off during _Walk the Line_?"

Naturally, Erik would not cool it. In an uncharacteristically good mood, he batted his eyelashes at Ahmed and nudged him in the ribs saying, "Why you _voyeur."_

All laughter and ribbing came to an abrupt end, however, when they saw the rest of their class, including Tim and Chester sitting in the auditorium looking uncharacteristically grave. "Hey guys," Tim said, beckoning them forward. "Why don't you take a seat."

Foreboding welling in everyone's chests, they did as they were bid and even Erik didn't have a wry quip to make. "What's going on?" Sorelli asked Armand as she slid into a seat beside him. Armand just shook his head.

"I don't know, they haven't said. But it looks _bad_."

It was bad. Or potentially bad, at least. "There's been a little...hiccup in the production of _Godspell_," Tim began carefully, fiddling with his cuffs in a way he only did when he was nervous as fuck. "It seems that there have been some objections raised regarding the content of the show – which of course, is _ridiculous_." Stressing the word to the cast would clearly make the rest of the world understand the absurdity of their concerns. "I'm sure you're all aware, but St. Mary's is, technically, a Catholic university and we do have certain religious authorities that have to be answered to. Now, I don't want you guys freaking out, we'll be fine, but there will be a few people coming down to rehearsal very soon, just sitting in. A few administrators from the university as well as a priest from the diocese. Content supervisors more or less, trust me, this show is squeaky clean compared to some of the crap they put in the Old Testament."

Nervous laughter greeted this statement, though the kids were shifting and looking anxiously at one another. Erik's face had lost all trace of humor, he was actually scowling quite deeply now. "This is fucking moronic," he muttered. "I mean, really, you did _Angels in America _last year for fuck's sake."

"Memorial did _Angels_," Chester corrected him. "We just cast a lot of kids from the program. _Godspell's_ affiliated with the school, which is why our asses are on the line."

"Bullshit," Erik groused.

"And don't we know it," Tim replied sedately. "But them's the breaks, kids. I don't want you to worry, we'll be fine, I'm sure we will be, I just wanted to give you a head's up so you know what's going on. Because we treat our students like adults here, fully capable of making their own decisions." The last bit he muttered under his breath, but his voice carried to the students nonetheless.

"So, wait, that's it?" Jamie asked, running a hand through her hair distractedly. She'd just gone platinum blonde with pink highlights and was waiting for people to compliment her on it. That was one opportunity blown. "We just sit on our asses and wait for the diocese to decide if we perform? Fuck my life, man."

Wire rim glasses slid up onto his forehead as Tim pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. It was always awful to be the bearer of bad news, especially since the people who bore bad news usually got blamed for the bad news in the first place. "No, that is not what we're going to do," he said, enunciating each word slowly, carefully contemplating what he was going to say so that he didn't just blurt out the first thing to come to mind. That was always a bad idea in these situations. "We're going to do our jobs. We're going to rehearse and get the show together and wait for this nonsense to blow over."

"And in the meantime," Chester interjected with a note of levity in his voice that he did not, in all likelihood, actually feel, "we're going to party." Digging into his coat pocket, he pulled out a stack of cards and handed them off to Charlotte to pass out. "Party at our house, October 10th. Happy Halloween, kids."


	29. We Beseech Thee

AN: Just a quickie update on the rehearsals. I'm not hugely satisfied with how this turned out as a chapter, it feels a bit sparse, but I think what Tim's saying needs to be said. Poor kids, it's so hard to be them. Don't worry, funtimes ahead (and some more drama, when is there not?)  
**Mominator: **As regards Erik's false nose, he keeps it on with a strong prosthetic adhesive, adds a little liquid latex around the seam to smooth that area out, then covers with base and powders accordingly. As he would say (to paraphrase Dolly Parton), "It takes a lot of make up to look this bad." Poor pup. But it does keep the nose on through laughing fits, sweaty futon-moving adventures and multiple rides on _Superman: Ride of Steel_.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_Father, hear thy children's call  
Humbly at thy feet we fall  
Prodigals confessing all  
We beseech thee, hear us!  
We thy call have disobeyed  
Into paths of sin have strayed  
And repentence have delayed_

We beseech thee, hear us!

_-Godspell  
_

The next two weeks rehearsals were gone through as if the entire production was on some kind of chemical stimulant. Their little audience of censors was due the next night and they insisted that the show be presented to them as 'authentically' as possible. That meant no scripts, they would expect few blocking changes between their viewing and opening night and all the costumes had to be more or less finished so that they might be deemed appropriately 'modest' by whoever it was who decided these things.

It was hard on a man who had twenty-plus years of theatrical experience and, from Tim's perspective, it seemed that the case was close to mutiny. Raoul and Christine had nothing else to judge by, they might have thought this was typical for a Memorial production and that was terribly sad for them. The others, at least, knew that things weren't normally so rushed and tense, but where Raoul and Christine just pressed on as cheerfully as possible, the others just complained. Whined would be more accurate. They were _tired_, they had _homework_, did they have to work the dances _again_? Well, this last was really only something that the others could comment on, Ann quickly discovered that Raoul and Christine had four left feet between them and relegated them to clapping and bopping in the back of all the big dance numbers. Even so, it got tiring just standing and swaying to music while your friends busted their asses pulling out cartwheels and backflips on command, to add some spice to a show that was getting all the joy sucked out of it in the name of propriety.

By God, this was supposed to be a fun, easy first show for the kids and it was turning into anything but that. First there was the drama with those other students who auditioned, now the university was pulling some kind of chapter and verse legal dilemma down upon their heads and why? Because some ancient prudes objected to the idea that Jesus drank _wine_ and kept company with women of ill-repute. Never mind that the Gospels said as much, that was Holy Scripture, but God help you if a _musical_ points those facts out to the general public. Because when there's singing and dancing involved, it becomes risque.

The kids were tired, his partner was cranky after overtime for the past week trying to alter hemlines and sew extra buttons onto cheap polyester Salvation Army cast-offs, Tim was barely holding himself together on his fifth cup of black coffee that day. Even though the reviews for _Three Days of Rain_ had been positive, the audience turn-out wasn't anything like he hoped it would be and he was biting his nails about making the heating payments this winter. Not that anyone needed to know about that, he could manage. Rather than pay for heat in his office, he would just invest in a Snuggie and deal with frostbite when the time came. He had other things to worry about. Like over-tired actors who were grumpy about the changes to Ann's choreography in 'We Beseech Thee.'

"No, no, no," Tim said, holding a hand up to stop Gaspard on piano. His poor musical director didn't even bother giving him an exasperated look at this point, he just put his head down on the keys and settled in for a cat nap. "Freddy, for God's sake, don't _wink_ at Erik before you go in for the double cartwheel, you're not supposed to be _propositioning _him. It's fun, not sexual."

Freddy looked appropriately chagrined and muttered an apology, but Erik just rolled his eyes. "You know," he said conversationally, "it's kind of hard to _not_ think dirty thoughts when your head is against someone else's crotch, Tim."

"Well, you can't, alright," his director snapped back irritably. "Come on guys, just try the number once again from the top – Sorelli, my dear, I know you're just having fun, but _please_, no smacking the backsides of your fellow castmates. And Armand – any of the guys, really – when you touch Freddy...don't make it suggestive. Just...pat him on the shoulder or something. Nothing below the shoulder." It was killing him, censoring the kids like this, since they just wanted to have fun – so did _he_, truth be told, but there was grant money on the line and it just wasn't worth it to keep the man-on-man affection in the show.

Naturally enough, Erik was the first and loudest to rail against the restrictions. "Are you fucking kidding me? You want us to straight-man-hug him? Three strong pats on the back, that's it? That's fucked up, Tim and you know it. Isn't this show about unconditional love and all that good crap? Where's the love if we can't even _touch_ each other?"

It occurred to Tim to point out the evident contradiction of Erik complaining about not being allowed to be affectionate with his classmates when his own personal bubble extended about five feet around his person, but he did not. All he did was state in a calm, rational voice, "Erik, I know that, you know that, we _all_ know that, but we need to appease the people coming to watch the show. If they give us a go, I'll ease up a little, but until then - "

"I will not PANDER to them!" Erik declared passionately, pointing one long, bony finger at the empty seats, looking for all the world like a tie-dyed, bell bottomed Grim Reaper.

A testimony to how exhausted he was, Tim closed his eyes and very slowly brought his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, which he squeezed, very slightly for a full five seconds before replying. "Erik, please tell me what we're doing here."

"Rehearsing."

"Right. Rehearsing what?"

"_Godspell_."

"Good. And what is _Godspell_?"

"A musical."

"That's my smart boy. And what is your particular part in this musical?"

"Judas Iscariot."

"Well, yes, but you aren't Judas, are you? You're Erik. What is your purpose here, on this stage, right now? As Erik."

"To act."

"Exactly!" Tim's head snapped up and he held both hands at his side, calmly, though his fingers twitched a little as though he wanted to curl his hands into fists. Or maybe just squeeze them enough to choke the life out of Erik's skinny little neck.

"You are an actor! _All_ of you are actors! And do you know what an actor's job is? Your job is to _entertain people! _Any actor who decides that they will act only for themselves, for their own ego or some personal sense of gratification has lost all concept of what it means to _be_ an actor. You kids are young, I understand that, I enjoy it and I will not let you become like so many other arrogant little shits in the field who have completely lost the point of theatre."

Running a hand through his hair, Tim wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry. This past week had been exhausting. Unbeknownst to the students, he'd been dragged to faculty meeting after faculty meeting, administrators expressing concern about the content of a show done in affiliation with the school. The occasional over-worked, over-zealous theology professor solemnly requesting that they be mindful that the Bible was a great tome of wisdom and to deliberately mock that tome was the worst kind of intellectual cruelty. It had been on the tip of Tim's tongue to mumble that denying two people the right to enter into the state of legal matrimony based on ancient Jewish cleanliness laws was a worse kind of intellectual cruelty, but he knew this wasn't the forum.

In the end he did not laugh or cry. He just continued talking. It had been a fucking hard week and he needed some kind of release.

"Theatre," he continued, words coming faster and more loudly in his ire, "in its purest, most unadulterated form is there to _entertain people!_ It is your _job_ to pander to the audience! Make them laugh, make them cry, make them feel _something_. If you don't give a damn about whether or not the audience feels anything after watching you, if you don't care whether or not anyone out there in that house understands your character or the piece, then you don't deserve to be on stage and I don't want you in this _program_ or in _any_ theatre in this country. If all you want to do up there is bitch and moan and pretend to know what art is so that you can classify yourself as an artist and scoff at all the little peons who don't respect your vision, then please, in the name of all that is good and holy, get off the fucking stage."

The rehearsal for a college production of _Godspell _was probably an inappropriate place to have a complete personal meltdown, but Tim had an excellent sense of timing and a flare for the dramatic that had served him well for over two decades now.

Never before had he gone on such a heated tirade about all he hated about modern theatre, especially the state of the modern musical. Ever since _RENT_ this creeping sense of pretension was strangling all he loved about musicals, and if it wasn't the spirit of smugness coming from some weird misplaced sense of intellectual superiority, it went in the other direction entirely, to commercialism. Tim Reyer had always been a firm believer that theatre was an art form for the people, for all people. Not for the producers, not corporations and not for some subset of the self-proclaimed illuminati who got off on their own self-indulgence.

Tell a story. That was what started it all, right? One caveman turns to another caveman and grunts the approximation of, "Oh, this crazy thing happened to me back in the woods...it kind of happened like this." And then Caveman Number One gets up and re-enacts the whole thing, to the delight of Caveman Number Two. There you have it. The first actor. Of course, when Caveman Number Three comes in and demands to know what's so funny and Caveman Number One starts to re-tell, then Caveman Number Two jumps up and says, "No, not like _that_, do it_ this _way, it's _much _better," the world saw the first director.

Tell them a good story. Make them laugh. Make them cry. Make them think, sure, but make them _understand_. Let them leave the theatre satisfied, curious, but not confused and, most of all, make them want to _come back. _They were losing something, he thought, in this weird high-tech world of Twitter and iPhones and YouTube and it was the loss of the joy of performing and seeing performances that troubled him and kept him awake at night. It's either Disney or Beckett. Personally, Tim felt that _Shrek: The Musical_ had just as much artistic merit as "Dreamer's Mime A_,_"in that both were exercises in futility that were best left unperformed. Was _Shrek_ entertaining? Maybe. For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like, but was it interesting? Absolutely not. Was "Dreamer's Mime A" interesting? Sure, but who the fuck cares?

It occurred to Tim that all the kids were staring at him with some terrible mixture of horror and awe on their faces and he felt a little winded, like he had just run for a long time without stopping for air or water. Even Erik looked like the wind had been taken out of his sails...or, more accurately, like a kicked puppy and since Tim felt like the kid's father half the time, it really wasn't a look he wanted to deal with.

Nor did he want to hear Erik stammer the words of an apology, as he was clearly gearing himself up to do now. It wasn't Erik's fault that they were dealing with a bunch of sexually repressed conservative fuckwits at this university. In all honestly, Tim didn't want to 'pander' to them either, but sometimes you had to pander. Sometimes you had to lie, manipulate and go against your own better judgment to get things accomplished. Sometimes you had to ignore your own moral compass to go with the flow; you didn't have to like it, but sometimes you had to just suck it up and _do_ it.

This time it was Erik's turn to run a hand through his hair, deep-set eyes wide with slight shock that his mentor and father stand-in had so thoroughly reamed him out. "Tim...I'm...sorry, I didn't - "

But Tim just held up a hand to silence him. "We're on a ten, guys. Get some water, sit down, we're running the number from the top one more time, then you're done for the night."


	30. If You Were Gay

AN: Fun chapter! Sort of. Fun chapter with lots of student interaction and some fairly serious issues lurking here. Based on my own frustration with some agents of intolerance I've recently encountered. This one just wrote itself, I fully intended to come in and narrate the performance, but the muses were having none of it. Ah well, enjoy!

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook or Apple products. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_If you were gay, that'd be okay  
I mean, 'cause hey,  
I like you anyway.  
Because you see, if it were me  
I would feel free to say that I was gay -  
But I'm not gay._

_-Avenue Q_

Two hours before the Invited Guest Rehearsal of Doom found Erik and Freddy in the boys' dressing room, putting on make up and gossiping. Like most red-blooded American boys on the cusp of adulthood would spend their Friday night doing. Granted, most kids weren't worried about having their theatre program shut down based on the whims of a few religious zealots while they did each other's make up, but those were minor details.

"Whoa."

"What?"

"Did you know they're having gay exorcisms?"

"Like, what, exorcisms with sparkly crucifixes and Holy Water with glitter inside?"

"Nah," Freddy said, putting his iPhone back into his messenger bag. "Not gays giving exorcisms, like, people trying to get...gay demons out or whatever. Like those Pray Away the Gay camps, but like a one-shot deal."

Erik paused in the application of base and shook his head sadly. "Fuck those people. How much do you want to bet that we get some of those in here tonight? They'll take one look at Tim and his limp right wrist and try and beat the gay out of all of us."

Snorting, Freddy pulled out a compact of blush and shook his head. "Ha, good luck with that. We're like a walking, talking float."

"Calling me fat?" Erik asked with a raised eyebrow. "Whatever. If there is a God – which I'm not convinced there is, darling – I don't think She would send anyone to hell for their sex life. As long as their sex life didn't involve torturing small animals and killing people. She'd be way too cool for that."

Silence from the other end of the row of mirrors prompted Erik to stand up and look down at the top of Freddy's head. His housemate had grown it out a bit for the show and now he had a nice Jew-fro, which Tim declared fit the Jesus character perfectly. "Um, Freddy, if you're seriously contemplating getting a gay exorcism, I'm afraid I can't let that happy. We're going to have to have a movie night. Mint chocolate ice cream, rollers in our hair, we'll watch _The Birdcage_, _To Wong Foo_, _Priscilla_, all the great drag queen movies. I'll let you paint my toenails."

Looking up, Freddy wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "Ugh, no thanks baby, I don't need to be anywhere _near_ your feet. And I'm not going to try to pray the gay away." He actually tried that when he was about twelve or so, didn't work and he wound up crying in Tim's office for three hours. The man established himself firmly in Freddy's mind as being a candidate for sainthood after that incident. "It just sucks. Since you _know_ there are going to be people like that here tonight and I don't need that kind of stress in my life right now. Big gay Jesus, you know? I mean, we can tone down the dances all Tim wants, but I've got a little swish in me. I've got a lot of swish."

"Don't worry," Erik said firmly, sitting back down to finish trying to cover up the bumps and craters on his face, scowling into the mirror as he did so. Fucking medication made him break out like nobody's business. "Tim doesn't want you to play it straight, I don't think...I think he's trying to spare us the gauntlet or something. If we can squeak by the censors tonight, we'll be able to do what we want later." At least that was what Erik _hoped_ was going to happen. After Tim freaked out on him the day before, Erik had been giving him a wide berth.

The other boys clattered in loudly at that point, Chester walking behind them with a rack of clothing, newly cleaned and pressed and carrying the slightly chemical scent of an artificial ocean breeze. "Evening, kittens," the costume designer said cheerfully. It was always a bad sign when Chester was_ that_ happy to see them. It meant things were not all sunshine and roses at home.

The conversation about Freddy's orientation conversion was quickly dropped. If Chester heard what they were on about he was likely to drag Freddy off for a Very Serious Talk about the gay rights movement through the years and then it would turn into a rant about how it wasn't fair for a young queer youth in this day and age to feel so down on themselves...yeah, they had a show to begin in half an hour. It really wasn't worth it.

The boys, being boys, tossed most of their street clothes on the floor and pulled their prologue jeans and t-shirts on. This was actually Erik's favorite part of the show, they all wore basic denim and the shirts were stamped, painted and colored with various political slogans, identifying which historical philosopher they were meant to represent. Armand's shirt was screen printed with various Renaissance artwork, but the back proclaimed, in bold black print: **The Earth Moves. Deal With It.**

Well, everyone else got cool t-shirts. Being that he was Sartre, Erik just wore a black t-shirt with **NOTHINGNESS** printed on the chest in white ink. Both he and Chester were pretty sure it would go over the audiences' heads, but that was what they were hoping a _lot_ of the subtext would do.

Actually, Erik thought he was pretty well screwed in the costume department. He eventually changed into the hippie garb that everyone wore when they chose to follow Jesus in _Godspell_. At the last minute his tie-dye top had been swapped out for a long, white linen shirt. Less campy and more 'George Harrison,' according to Chester. At Erik's own suggestion, he also donned a hemp necklace, a colorful, if morbid allusion to Judas' ultimate fate. Overall, he was satisfied with the costume change...with the exception of his bell-bottoms.

"They sag," he complained, pulling up on the rear end of the pants with a pained expression on his face. "It makes me look like I have a droopy ass."

"Well, we solved that with the shirt, it covers your ass and most of your thighs too," Chester said, walking over and pinching some of the extra fabric on Erik's backside. He'd changed the boy's diapers, he could pinch, grab or otherwise touch any part of his anatomy that he deemed appropriate. In an appropriate way, not in a Mick Jagger/Mackenzie Phillips way that was gross. "I can't _make_ you have an ass, kiddo. It's your cross to bear, deal with it."

Ultimately, Erik shrugged and pulled the Sartre shirt over his head. Unlike _some_ of the little divas Chester had worked with over the years, Erik wasn't one to bitch and moan about his clothes, he wore what he was given with minimal complaining. It was something they worked out long ago, Chester and Erik, ever since the day he and Maddy decided to celebrate fifteen month old Erik getting his first nasal prosthesis by dressing him in baby-drag. It was the cutest little sailor dress with a matching hat, everyone they saw that day commented on how adorable their baby girl was. Charlie thought it was hilarious, but Tim face-palmed and told them that they were setting baby Erik up for a lifetime of sexual confusion.

He wasn't wrong, but if Erik ever tried to say he didn't like a costume that Chester picked out for him, all he had to do was threaten to take out the baby pictures – yes, _those_ baby pictures - and the kid just clammed right up.

"CHESTER!"

Unfortunately, not all kids were as agreeable as Erik.

"Yes, my little chickadee?" he inquired, turning to face Charlotte who had come running into the boys' dressing room without a thought for modesty.

"I have a slight emergency," she said, her cheeks flaming pink with embarrassment. Chester said nothing, just raised an eyebrow and waited for the girl to finish. "So...I kind of sort of...wore a strapless bra today and...well..." She let the arms which had been crossed against the girls drop. Reluctantly, Chester made his eyes do the same and when he saw the damage that choosing to wear a halter top had done to his little prima donna.

"Oh, honey," Chester sighed, shaking his head. Charlotte looked down, totally ashamed at her oversight. He'd given her a flowing, flower-printed dress that was very loosely gathered at the waist and slipped off the shoulders. A nude bra and re-enforced tank top would have kept everything modest and together, but take the straps out of the equation and those girls would be flopping every which way.

"Wow, Charlotte," Ahmed said, having noticed the 'problem' with wide eyes. "Are you just _trying_ to kill us before the curtain even goes up?"

"I'm _sorry_," she whined pitifully. "I _forgot_."

"Shush," Chester said, holding up a finger to Charlotte's lips. "If there's one thing I hate more than an unsupported rack, it's whining, so we're going to stop that and I'm going to get some double-stick tape. A _lot _of double-stick tape."

With a melodramatic flourish of his hands, Chester was gone back to the costume shop, shouting over his shoulder for the kids to get dressed, warm up and not dawdle.

As soon as he was gone, the dawdling instantly commenced.

"Freddy wants to pray away his gay," Erik informed the room, to general indignation.

Ahmed probably put it best. "Are you fucking crazy?" he demanded as Freddy just gaped, open-mouthed at Erik and his utter tactlessness. Armand chose that moment to duck into the bathroom and lock the door.

Charlotte's reaction was more nurturing. "Oh, Freddy!" she exclaimed, running toward him and throwing her arms around his waist, leaning her head against his chest. "Don't pray away your gay. I love your gay. I love you and I love your gay."

"You can do that?" Raoul asked, confused.

"You can_not_," Erik clarified for him. "But some wacky Christians think that if you get an exorcism, all your longing for sex with men – or women, if you're Ann – will go away. By magic. Godly magic."

"That's stupid."

Nodding as if his point was proved, Erik pointed and loudly declared, "See! Even _Raoul_ thinks it's stupid, and if _Raoul_ thinks something is stupid - "

"Okay!" Freddy said, prying himself out of Charlotte's well-meaning embrace. "I don't want to pray away _anyone's _gay, least of all my own. It was just something I saw on _The Tyra Show_ and I told Erik and now he's making it a big deal because he wants to be the center of attention. As usual."

Erik didn't even have the good grace to look sheepish. "I worry about you," he shrugged careless. Overall his manner did not communicate 'I care' as much as 'I'm bored with this conversation now,' but then Erik had issues expressing his feelings. "When my Christ-fearing friend starts talking about gay exorcisms, I get nervous."

Remarkably, Freddy melted a bit at that. "I'm your friend!" he said, his whole countenance lighting up. "You said it! You actually said it!"

This time it was Erik's turn for blood to rush to his cheeks, though it wasn't visible under the layers of base he'd applied to even out his skin. "Freudian slip," he muttered.

The elation would not cease. "Erik's my friend," Freddy declared in a happy sing-song voice.

Now that the madness had passed, Armand deemed it appropriate to come out of the bathroom. Since it had been utterly silent in there for the past few minutes, it was safe to assume that he was simply hiding in the bathroom, rather than using it for the purpose God had set it down to serve. "With friends like Erik, you don't need enemies," he muttered, glaring up at the taller, more emaciated boy as he walked past.

Oh, Armand. So emotional. So moody. Erik wondered how many months he'd be on that closet-case's shit list. Probably not very wrong. If nothing else, they would all have to unite against the hate-mongers in the audience. Nothing got someone to dump a grudge faster than coming together against a commonly hated foe. Look at Magneto and Professor Xavier. Happens all the time.


	31. On The Willows

AN: Okay, I warn you now, this chapter is VERY narrative-heavy and has very little dialogue. Also it's all from Tim's perspective since he's the only person who's watching the show who can comment. I thought about making it from Christine's POV since we haven't heard much from her, but it would be a really fractured narrative. So yeah, you're basically tuning in to hear a play summary. A little dull, perhaps, but necessary for the plot. It would be a little silly to post the reaction chapter without giving anyone anything to react to. I'll be getting up the next chapter within the next few days (I hope!), so we'll get more dialogue and happy funtimes then. Still, this chapter does finally showcase Erik's singing, so for anyone whose been waiting for a taste of that, here you go!

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

Fifteen minutes before the show was set to begin at 7:30, the plan was that the cast would arrive in the house and begin handing out fliers and pamphlets to audience members, each posing as an earnest young political activist, touting their own personal philosophies – and shouting down the opposition. In the midst of the hubbub, Meg would mount the stage and begin her opening. Tim had gone back and forth about whether or not to do so tonight, but figured what the hell? It would be more interesting than having the kids just walk out awkward and unrehearsed. Anyway, if word got back to the administration that the actors were handing out pamphlets, they'd probably want to see what was in them.

The administration had actually gone all out for this night. All involved had been led to believe that it would be maybe one or two professors from the religious ed department and perhaps the Dean of Arts and Sciences. Surely not more than five people. Tim was very surprised, therefore, when no less than a dozen people turned up in the lobby with legal pads and university identification cards. In attendance were about six professors, including one from the Women's Studies department who always seemed to have some major issue with Memorial's shows being "anti-woman." Tim vaguely recognized a few bored-looking members of the administrative staff and, horror of horrors, a middle-aged Catholic priest, in full black with a collar.

Weirdly enough, the priest was the first person to introduce himself. Smiling, he came forward and shook Tim's hand warmly, introducing himself as, "Father Jack," and giving him his compliments about _Three Days of Rain_, which was wrapping up this weekend. He then went on to say how much he was looking forward to the performance, "I just _adore_ your work," and finished up by declaring _Godspell_ one of his favorite musicals. Tim was left slightly shell-shocked and barely noted the chillier greetings from the others in attendance.

The night was off to a great start as far as Tim's artistic ideology was concerned, but he couldn't help resting his head in his hands as Erik shouted over everyone else, "_Écoutez_-_moi! L'existence précède et commande l'essence. _Man is condemned to be free! Once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does! God is irrelevant to living! It is certain that we cannot escape anguish. We ARE anguish!"

It was all very lovingly delivered and Tim appreciated that Erik had gone on Wikiquote to give himself something to say in between his shouting that there is God, but it was worrisome when, from his white-knuckled position in the booth, he could see the woman nearest Erik scribbling on some yellow legal pad.

"I honor and love you," Meg began, her voice strong, though her eyes were darting back and forth nervously. "But I shall obey God rather than you. And if this is the doctrine that _corrupts_ the youth, then I am a mischievous person."

She decided that it would be a great motivator to think of the censors that were in the audience as those condemning her to death by ingestion of poison. At least she thought that was what was going on with Socrates right now. She hadn't actually done her dramaturgy as well as she could have. Happily enough, she could sing and did so in her high, sweet voice, "_Wherefore, oh Men of Athens, I say to you. Therefore, acquit me or not, but whichever you do. I shall never alter my ways..._"

After which time, Jamie, as Thomas Aquinas, run up to get her stage time, breathlessly rattling off a succinct version of the saint's teachings. The words, she did not entirely understand, but it didn't matter because she sold it like she did. _"God is apprehended by imagination, intuition, reason, touch, opinion, sense, and name - and so on..."_

Jamie's real strength as a singer was her impressive lung capacity. That girl could hold a note and rattle of three measures of lyrics without pausing for breath for a good thirty seconds. Or maybe it just sounded that way, since she sang _fast_. It took a solid forty-five minutes of repetition for her to separate her words for that verse.

Gradually, Tim began to relax. It was going tremendously well, aside from the sour looks on the faces of administrators who were _determined_ not to enjoy themselves, he could find nothing in the show that would be deemed 'inappropriate' on a college campus. The priest was smiling hugely, not writing anything down in his legal pad, he appeared to be thoroughly engrossed and so he would appear for the rest of the show. If Tim needed to lift his spirits, he only had to glance over at the excited expression on the priest's face to feel better about the show's chances.

By the end of the prologue, everything was lovely and cacophonous, just the way it was intended to be. Rather than using a whistle or shofar to get the crowd's attention, Tim just had Raoul inexpertly blowing into a horn, something they found battered and tarnished, hanging out in prop storage. Since the costumes were purchased entirely from the Goodwill, the props might as well be on the same level. Raoul was an absolutely _adorable_ John the Baptist. Maybe it was mis-casting, but even when he was telling people that they were going to be baptized with fire (all Johnny Boy had was tap water out of a gasoline container), he made it sound just _precious_.

Of course, once the cast got their petrol-scented bath, they had to change their clothes out of a big trunk that Raoul had dragged on stage behind him. This was something Tim had been a bit worried about, but the girls were all wearing tank tops and the boys...well, the day someone raised an objection to seeing nude male chests at this school in the name of 'modesty' was the day that Tim quit.

One piece of casting he did not regret was giving Freddy that long-coveted role of Jesus. Not that he was any kind of psychologist, but Tim did know that the kid, regardless of his current alienation from The Church _wanted_ to be Christ-like. Not in a miracle-working, dying for people way, but in a loving, accepting kind of way, which is really what the message was all about. Nice to give the kid a chance, and he had the voice and likability factor that made him the perfect choice.

Also, Freddy was a hugger. It was of vital importance that Jesus be a hugger in this production, regardless of Erik's earlier bitching about their not being allowed to touch one another – bitching which Tim had completely forgiven him for, even though the boy didn't know that yet. Let him sweat it out for another few hours, then he'd buy him a soda or something as a show of reconciliation.

Being _Godspell _was the quintessential 'let's put on a musical' musical, there wasn't much to it. Sure, there were the themes of love and acceptance and joy of the message that often got lost in the shuffle with most major religions, but apart from that, it was a straightforward show. Singing, dancing and Bible verses.

He'd thrown in a few surprises along the way, of course. Christine's final piercing high note at the end of "Bless the Lord My Soul" made the audience jerk upright in their seats, as he knew it would. Erik and Freddy also engaged in some fantastic tap moves during "It's All For the Best." He couldn't take credit for that, of course, it was all Ann. They had to carry that number entirely on their own, both of those boys were so tall that to turn it into a group tap would just look ridiculous – especially since Raoul and Christine could _not_ tap and would just be head-bopping sympathetically on the sidelines. The one part of that number that had been Tim's suggestion was the run-up-the-wall-and-do-a-backflip move that probably had a real name, but if it did, Tim was unaware of it.

The intermission was _very_ brief, only five minutes compared to the ten they planned on including in this show. Tim did not want to give any of these people the opportunity to wander out of the theatre before they saw the second act. The second act was definitely heavier than the first and it was here that Tim truly wanted to turn the show from 'feel-good musical' into something with a point and that moment came during "By My Side."

Why he gave motormouth Jamie the slowest song in the show was anyone's guess, but after a suitable amount of trial and error, she managed to match her mouth the the tempo of the song and that was all Tim could ask for. Everyone who joined in the chorus was to be very positive – he had never seen Jamie being anything but positive, she fell over herself thanking him when he told her she could keep the pink highlights for the show. Everyone else was to follow suit, all except Freddy and Erik.

Erik separated from the crowd during this number. He was standing alone, lit from above by two dim source fours. The mood around Freddy was mellow now, everyone was sitting or leaning as they sang, in direct contrast to Erik who stood ramrod straight, facing out to the audience with a look on his face that was reminiscent of a man facing his own execution. Yeah, this was just a production of _Godspell_, but that didn't mean that it wasn't going to be a _good _production of _Godspell_.

As the singing faded out and the instruments died away to leave one sole woodwind playing, Erik spoke his lines with a sort of dull horror in his tone, "Then the man they called Judas Iscariot went to the chief priests and said, 'What will you give me to betray him to you?' They paid him thirty pieces of silver." Erik swallowed convulsively, turning his head to look at Freddy, disbelief and despair coloring his tone. "From that moment, he began to look out for an opportunity to betray him."

This next bit of blocking was something that Tim was determined to keep in the show no matter what. It was a beautiful moment and Erik and Freddy both played it to perfection, Erik especially since that boy brought pathos to an artform. Erik did not begin singing "By My Side" with the others, he simply crossed up center slowly, coming to kneel, literally, at Freddy's side. Freddy looked up and, seeing Erik, opened his arms to him. Erik lowered his head slowly into Freddy's lap, prostrate for a moment before he curled up on his side and let the curly-haired boy stroke his hair, staring down and deadly serious.

It was gorgeous, it really was and that, above all else was probably going to be the thing that would drive the censors crazy, but Tim didn't care about it in this particular moment. Unconditional love was unconditional love and, even as a young Protestant kid who rarely attended church, he always thought that Judas got the short end of the stick. Because, without the betrayal, there could be no Resurrection, right? Right. So, why hate Judas for doing what needed to be done? There was no need and the Jesus of Tim's _Godspell _did not hate _anyone_, no matter what the Jesus of St. Mary's did or didn't do.

The little game of grab-ass that Ann thought would be a big fuck off to the prudes in the audience could be cut, Tim didn't need a bunch of eighteen-year-old boys acting like they were in a big gay locker room to make a statement. Nor did he need Sorelli trying to tongue-kiss Jamie during, "Turn Back, O Man" to try to teach the audience something of tolerance. Those things he could cut without remorse, but this? This was necessary. This was acceptance, forgiveness and need all wrapped up in one simple moment and he would be damned if he let that fall to the wayside because of others' opinions.

Once the song was over, there were a few moments of silence. Long moments of silence and Tim was worried that they would just call the production off there, but then, thank fucking God, their enthusiastic priest friend began to clap loudly and vigorously and Tim felt himself breathe again.

It was a downhill coast after that – sure, maybe tying Freddy to a chain-link fence during the "crucifixion" scene was raising the ghost of Matthew Shepard a little too literally, but this wasn't a new idea, so no one could accuse him of pressing a political agenda if they wanted to.

Of course, he did have an ace in the hole, just in case the censor group wanted to raise objections, just in case they wanted to shut the show down and that trump card came in the form of a tall, skinny teenage boy with the most beautiful voice Tim had ever heard.

It wasn't the done thing to have the Judas character sing "On the Willows," he usually disappeared during the crucifixion scene as Raoul did during intermission. There was no reason Tim could offer _not _to do this and besides, anyone who wanted to shut down a show wherein Erik had a solo like this was either deaf or not entirely human. And the Board of Regents would be most put-out if they found out that one of their members was an alien.

Freddy was upstage center, tied to a fence that had been standing ominously in the background the entire show, Superman t-shirt gone by the wayside, head bowed. Erik stood off to the left in a single spotlight and it was there that he began to sing and in that moment, the administrators put down their legal pads and, for the first time since they sat down at this show, began to _listen_.

"_On the willows there,  
We hung up our lives.  
For our captors there  
Required of us songs  
And our tormentors mirth._

Saying, 'Sing us one  
Of the songs of Zion._  
Sing us one  
Of the songs of Zion.'  
But how can we sing,  
Sing the Lord's songs,  
In a foreign land?"_

It was insane how amazing this kid's voice was. Sure, he had been in voice lessons for years, but even before Gaspard took him under his tutelage, there was this unmistakable purity and beauty in his voice that would make people sit up and take note, even without an iota of technical skill. And this was why Tim could never stay angry with Erik for being a dick half the time.

Because, underneath it all, Erik really wasn't a bad kid. He might cut up during rehearsals, but he was there, every single day, on time. He might joke about engaging in lewd conduct during the show to shock audiences, but he never diverged from his blocking or direction once. He knew how important this show was, not in terms of his own academic investment, but how important it was to the program, to Memorial and, above all, to Tim. Because it was important to someone he cared about, Erik would do his absolutely damnedest to make sure it went off without a hitch. Because he was a good kid. Even if Tim doubted it himself sometimes.

The show couldn't end on that note, even though he did see a few audience members discreetly wipe away tears at the conclusion of the song. There was the triumphant return of Raoul, standing up stage, singing the reprise of "Prepare Ye" and everyone clapped and grooved and stood in front of Freddy who was untying himself so that he could come out and take his bow.

Tim hadn't been sure what to expect on that score, whether there would be boos or applause or, worst of all, absolute silence. As it turned out, he shouldn't have worried. The priest leapt to his feet and began applauding vigorously the moment Ahmed, Armand and Sorelli came out for the first set of bows. The rest of the audience response was more subdued, but still, they were clapping and that was all Tim could ask. The kids knew enough not to try to milk it and scampered offstage after the company bow, leaving Tim to come down from the booth and deal with the angry masses.

Slade, his SM, offered no words of encouragement, but Tim didn't expect him to. He was efficient as anything, but that kid was strange.


	32. Turn Back, O Man

AN: On the advice of **Mominator**, I will make every effort not to spoil this chapter in the Author's Note. I usually skip ANs until the end of the fic and go back and read them, I wasn't even sure anyone _was_ reading these, it's great to know that you are! This chapter was written over the course of a few days, actually, I kept struggling with the balance of humor and seriousness. Just as a general note, I don't want to make people who oppose the theatre into charicatures, but having been in similar situations myself, some of the more conservative people out there can descend into the world of unintentional self-parody when they get on their pedestals. Ah well, suffice it to say, the kiddies are nervous, as well they should be! Them and their heathen Jesus musical.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Any musicals, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_Turn back, O man  
Forswear thy foolish ways  
Old now is earth  
And none may count her days  
Yet thou, her child  
Whose head is crowned with flames  
Still will not hear  
Thine inner God proclaims_

_Turn back, O man (I can show you what to do with that pen)  
Turn back, O man (Mmm, wanna play naughty librarian?)  
Turn back, O man (No? S'okay, I have options)  
Forswear thy foolish ways (Where's Thomas Aquinas at?)  
_

_-Godspell_ (With ad-libs by La Sorelli herself)

The atmosphere backstage was nothing if not tense.

"Are we going to get excommunicated if they don't like us?" Raoul asked worriedly, wringing his hands in his t-shirt before Chester plucked it out of his fingers. No use wrinkling the shirt if he was just going to have to put it on again tomorrow. Unlike everyone else in this department, Chester could be practical, at least about all matters religious. There was nothing he could see to object to in the show on religious grounds – well, except for the whole 'Jesus as the Messiah' thing. He wasn't so much behind that idea, but he understood that many people were. A Jew for Jesus he was not.

Erik already hung his shirt up on the rack and was sliding his pants off without undoing his belt. Hopefully those would go alongside his shirt, but Chester held out no hope for the boy making the same happy mistake twice. "They wouldn't. They can't. We even included the resurrection bit, we didn't just leave Freddy up there, they do that in some productions. Anyway, I don't believe in God, so who cares if they do?

"Less talking, more dressing, my little chickadees," Chester said, bending down and picking up the pants that Erik had predictably left in a heap on the floor.

Freddy was already in his street clothes, but was still sitting in front of his mirror, removing his make up very slowly with a cleansing pad. "Can we just...not go up? Wait for Tim to come and deliver the bad news?"

"Oh, come on," Ahmed replied, rolling his eyes. "You're Jesus, man, grow a pair."

"Did Jesus even _have_ a pair?" Erik asked mischievously. "Maybe that's where all those celibacy rumors came from."

Chester cuffed him gently in the back of the head. "Erik, put some pants on." Naturally enough, Erik cried child abuse, but not for very long. Regardless of his attempts to lighten the mood with jokes about Jesus's genitalia – and really, that was only funny to Erik who had a sick sense of humor – things quickly settled back into an uneasy silence as the boys removed their make up and put their normal clothes on.

Everyone congregated out in the actors' lobby, boys and girls, and marched up a flight of stairs that led to a side door in the main lobby. Naturally, Erik began humming the "Imperial Death March" until Meg shushed him and Armand elbowed him sharply in the ribs. "Fine," he muttered angrily under his breath. "I'll be just as dour and pessimistic as the rest of you."

Any other day, someone surely would have pointed out the inherent contradiction of interests in Erik trying to imply that he was anything _other_ than dour and pessimistic, but this just was not the time nor the place to have that conversation. Tim met them at the top of the stairs and silently pointed them toward a row of richly upholstered low-standing benches upon which they were expected to sit while they were read the riot act.

The vast majority of audience members had departed while the actors were dressing, all they had left was a stony-faced woman and a short, round-faced young man who could easily have been mistaken for a student, was it not for the male pattern baldness playing havoc with his scalp. The priest remained as well, he was the only one of the group who smiled at them when they sat down. Erik was immediately on-edge. What was this, good cop/bad cop? The priest would go for kinder, gentler harassment and the administrator would go for the jugular?

That certainly seemed to be the case, for no sooner had Christine squeezed her left butt cheek onto the over-crowded bench than the angry looking lady started with, "After a careful review of your show – there are certainly some _issues_ that I feel like addressing, I must tell you off the bat. We are a Catholic institution and as such there are certain strictures that we must adhere to. I hoped I made myself perfectly clear when I met with your director, but evidently there were some misunderstandings in our conversation."

Next to Christine, Erik visibly tensed, his hands curling tightly in upon themselves. Ahmed was about three people away from him and could not be counted on to physically restrain him, though he did glance over at Erik worriedly when she began disparaging Tim. No one, but _no one_ got away with shit like that around him, especially not some buttoned-up conservative fuckwit. This situation could go even further downhill _very_ fast. Without really thinking about it, Christine reached over and impulsively grabbed one of Erik's hands with her own and gave his closed fist a squeeze.

Erik looked down at Christine, his expression all surprise. She smiled reassuringly up at him, noting idly that he didn't seem to have gotten all the make up off his nose. She reached up to brush the powder off, but he caught her fingers with his other hand and pressed an impetuous kiss to her knuckles. It was so surprising that Christine giggled a little and almost missed the fact that the priest decided to butt into the conversation.

"You know, before anything else is said," Father Jack interjected warmly, curling the pamphlets he had collected from his seat in his hands, "I just want to say, you have put forth a great effort tonight, really spectacular. I can't wait to see the show when you finally launch your production, I'm sure it'll be even better, but tonight was great, really great."

The woman looked slightly flustered at the priest's praise and the young man beside her actively frowned in annoyance. "Once the kinks are ironed out," she said finally, fingers tightening on her legal pad. "The scene between Judas and Jesus for example, I found - "

"Oh! Wasn't that terrific, brought tears to my eyes," Father Jack gushed, eyes easily picking Erik and Freddy out from the crowd. "I thought it was just such a beautiful interpretation of that passage in the Gospel of John, 'Do what you must do.'"

_That _effectively silenced the woman, but the man at her side was not so easily stifled. When he stepped forward a bit, the security tag around his neck glared in the lobby lights and it was then that his credentials were revealed in the letters CR – Campus Republicans. Turned out he was a student after all, albeit an older one. "I did not appreciate the homosexual subtext that scene interjected," he said flatly. "Also, your play paints Judas as too much of a hero, I personally think you should have him _leave_ after the Betrayal to, oh, I don't know, _betray_ Jesus."

Tim spoke up then, quietly, but with great authority. "I don't think our show will make anyone forget what Judas's actions were in the Bible – it pointedly highlights them, actually. I wanted to do something a little different. Something with a bit more depth than _Passion of the Christ._" He couldn't help that jibe. That was ten whole dollars and three hours of his life that he could never get back and it all culminated in what? A gratuitous ass-shot of Jim Caviezel. The Pope would probably appreciate their show more than seeing Jim's hairy hind quarters in IMAX. Unfortunately, the Pope didn't hold as much sway as a Campus Republican. "And I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean by homosexual subtext."

"Oh, don't you?" Stone Face found her voice again. "Perhaps a moment between the two of them – nothing physical. The song took on a distinctly _erotic_ tone after that."

Erotic? Seriously? If the hormone-infused teenagers didn't find the song erotic, how could the dried up Republicans? Evidently they weren't the only ones in complete disagreement.

"I must say, I didn't get that tone at all from the song," Father Jack said, a small frown on his cheerful features. "From 'Turn Back, O Man,' certainly I did, but that's rather the _point_. No, I adored the simplicity of the moment, I think you should keep it."

Dead silence. All of the performers were unutterably grateful for the defense of Father Jack, but they weren't sure how much sway the man actually held. Apparently, neither were their critics. Male Pattern Baldness and Stone Face exchanged an inscrutable glance and seemed to determine that this was not a battle they could win while the priest was there. "Well...we'll see what the Bishop thinks," Stone Face said shortly, glancing at her watch. "I have other engagements this evening. Good night."

MPB apparently had nothing else to say and just stalked out of the lobby after her, tossing his head of non-hair rudely. The second the glass doors closed behind them, the kids fell all over themselves thanking the priest profusely and Tim was especially noisy in his gratitude.

"I can't thank you enough for coming tonight," he said, taking Father Jack's hand and shaking it enthusiastically. "I think you were the only person actually paying attention tonight."

"Oh, I just love theatre," the priest said jovially, giving Tim a hearty pat on the arm. "And Godspell is such a fun show, it really puts the Gospel stories in a truly positive light and your production is one of the best I've seen at showcasing the pure joy – and I have seen _many _productions. You know,I once saw it done entirely in the nude." A broad smile lit his face at the memory while everyone else smiled slightly stiffly. Priests speaking about nudity make the whole world uncomfortable. "You have nothing to worry about, I'll speak to the bishop myself. I'm sure the show will be great...any chance of my getting some comped tickets?"

Tim was quick to reassure him that he could have an entire row if he wanted one, and thank you _so _much for taking the time to come down.

"So that's it then?" Raoul asked once Father Jack was gone. "We - we made it? We're okay? We're not being excommunicated."

"Well, that's not a possibility for me," Tim said with a raised eyebrow. "I'm not Catholic. But I'd say we're alright as far as...communication goes." Even though his tone was sarcastic, there was no mistaking the relief that showed plainly in the sagging of his shoulders, which had been tense as a steel rod all evening. "Nice job tonight, kids. It'll be a great run."

"And after _that_," Sorelli added with a grin, "we party."

"Oh," Freddy piped up. "And when it's time to party, we will party _hard_."


	33. Masquerade

AN: The first chapter with a Phantom of the Opera song in the title! The danger is past and we are going full-steam ahead on the fun train! I hope. Also, here's my public service announcement: Underage drinking is very illegal. Probably not a good idea to do it, but lots of people do. If you're determined to break the law, don't break the law and then drive under the influence. Special note, thanks for the encouragement, **Mominator**! I really appreciate it, I was a total theatre kid in college and this is a fairly accurate representation of a lot of things that went on around the theatre. Not _all_ of course, but these next few chapters definitely a lot of what makes theatre kids so...unique among the college set.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright.

* * *

_Masquerade!  
Paper faces on parade...  
Masquerade!  
Hide your face,  
So the world will never find you!_

_Masquerade!  
Every face a different shade...  
Masquerade!  
Look around -  
There's another mask behind you!_

_-Phantom of the Opera  
_

**"Your company is requested at a masquerade in honor of All Hallows Even, to be given at the home of Mr. Chester Louis and Mr. Timothy Christian Reyer-Goldman, 78 Prospect St. in Providence on the 10****th**** day of October. The evening will begin promptly at six o'clock. All those who do not come in costume will be turned away. If it is obvious that you have put no effort into your costume, you will be laughed at and turned away. The theme for the night, listed below, is, we feel, broad enough that obtaining an appropriately convincing costume should not be difficult. An RSVP would be lovely, but we harbor no illusions on that front. Hope to see you there.**

**Come as your favorite literary character (literature, in this case, being such characters as are found in books, plays and – if you must – musical theatre). This being a masquerade, masks are encouraged, but optional."**

It was a tradition – if one frowned upon by Chester once he returned to work following the annual Halloween Masque – that all attending theatre personnel would steal some aspect of their costumes from Memorial. Even though the costume designer would sigh and rant and rave when he saw the costume shop looking like some fabric bombed Hiroshima after everyone failed to sneak their stolen merchandise back inside, it had become something of a tradition. Naturally, it was Maddy's fault.

This 'tradition began after she famously pilfered an enormous gown from their production of _Dangerous Liasons_ to wear for a party with an MGM musical theme. At first, after getting over the shock of seeing the costume _away_ from Memorial, no one knew who the hell she was supposed to be, but the truth of the puzzling costume was revealed quickly: Jean Hagan in _Singing in the Rain_. It was still talked about as being one of the cleverest costumes that had been procured for a Reyer-Goldman collaboration.

Clearly, with his mother's reputation proceeding him, Erik knew that he had to come up with something even more fantastically elaborate for his own costume. He had been working on it for days and days, sneaking pieces out of the long rows of musty and dusty unused costumes while Chester was on his lunch break. A slashed doublet on Tuesday, a pair of navy blue velvet slops on Wednesday. Thursday was a big day, he'd gotten a lace collar, ruffled shirt, hose and a pair of jackboots smuggled out in his backpack. The _hat _was the most difficult piece to pilfer, he didn't want to crush it in his bag and certainly wasn't about to walk out of the theatre with an enormous black hat, complete with white feather on top. It would totally ruin the element of surprise.

Well, surprise for Chester anyway, since Erik's secrecy was largely due to the fact that he knew the man would be eaten alive with curiosity if he couldn't tell what his little protege was taking from the shop to dress himself as. It had been obvious to Freddy and Ahmed for a week now, once they saw the cavalier clothing items and confirmed when the plumed hat and comically oversized false nose appeared on the kitchen table Friday night. Erik finally decided to suck it up and _ran _out of the theatre holding the hat, praying to the god he did not believe not to run into anyone. It seemed that She was feeling generous that day for not a soul saw him make his great escape.

Naturally, the young man who did not possess a nose and passionately declared in 2003 that he was moving to Canada and burning his draft card if the Iraq War necessitated such actions would go as the greatest soldier with the greatest nose in literary history: Cyrano de Bergerac.

And why not? Ever since Erik had seen the Jose Ferrer version on television when he was little, he had been rather infatuated with the character. Not the love story, he thought Roxanne was a bit of an idiot and couldn't really see what Cyrano was so in love with about her, but he himself was quite in love with Cyrano. He was just so _cool_. Batman aside, Cyrano was Erik's favorite superhero. Superhero was right, he could fight one hundred men single-handed and come out with only a scratch, dispatch a man easily in a duel whilst performing a ballade, use equal parts wit, intimidation and good taste to influence a theatre company, in short, he was the ultimate human being.

It was probably Erik's least well-kept secret that he would _kill_ to play Cyrano. Not now, of course, he was too young now, but when he reached that magical age of thirty? Oh, just _try_ to stop him. Cyrano was as all men, in his opinion, should be: passionate, brilliant, witty, loyal and in the possession of sweet sword-fighting skills. Erik was not like this, but goddammit, he _longed_ to be. And for tonight, one night only, he would get the chance to play that part.

It was with an uncanny amount of good humor that Erik made himself ready for the party, especially considering the circumstances under which he was going. Raoul had called earlier that afternoon, frantic, because his costume (Robin Hood) required tights and he just didn't own a pair. Why he thought that Freddy, Ahmed or Erik would was anyone's guess, but they did know where to obtain a pair: the costume shop, naturally.

Being that he was in possession of a key to the theatre, Erik was going to have to accompany the other boys on their little pre-party detour and he found that he did not mind as much as he thought he would. Since Raoul had accompanied them on their retreat from the crazy Christians with the signs so many weeks ago, he found he couldn't think about him as badly as he had. Sure, he didn't _like_ him, but he figured that Raoul was harmless enough. Stupid, yeah, but harmless.

Raoul met them at the house, clad in a forest green tunic and brown boots. Evidently he was going for an Errol Flynn style of costume as he'd attached a thin blonde moustache to his upper lip with some Top Stick. In his hands he held a little brown cap with a feather inexpertly sewn to it. "Hey guys!" he called, with an unreasoning kind of cheer upon seeing his classmates. Freddy managed to match his enthusiasm and went forward to give him a hug, too-short frilled sleeves flopping about as he did so.

Intending to dazzle them all with his literacy, Freddy was going as Ichabod Crane of _Sleepy Hollow_ fame. Deferring to literature as opposed to Johnny Depp (though God knew Freddy would pay good money to _defer_ to Johnny Depp, in any capacity), he set out to make his costume as authentic as possible. He already possessed the reedy-ness of frame necessary to resemble the character, his sleeves were four inches too short and his shoes were a size too big for him, stuffed with newspaper in the toe. Like Erik he'd purchased a long, hooked nose from iParty, but unlike Erik, he did not possess the necessary mechanical skills to make the protuberance look entirely natural, but still, it was a solid effort.

Ahmed, well, Ahmed wanted to be a cowboy, but didn't know any great literary cowboys that he particularly wanted to emulate, so he just grabbed big boots, a broad-brimmed hat, tan duster and imitation bowie knife from the costume shop at school and planned on telling anyone who asked that he was Quincey Morris, the Texan from _Dracula_. Hey, he rode a horse and carried a big knife, that made him kind of like a cowboy, right?

The trip into Memorial was short and sweet, no one had to be sneaky this time. Everyone who was anyone was well on their way to the soiree, or else were dressing for the night. There was no need to sneak and Erik had keys for every possible nook and cranny of that place, so nothing was really off-limits. They found a pair of appropriately colored tights and were back in the car quick as you like. It was while they were driving upon the on-ramp to the highway that Raoul began to panic.

"Oh, _crap!_" he shouted, annoyed, from the backseat of Freddy's car (there would be no hope of finding parking for the van tonight, so they retired that mode of transportation for the evening).

"What's up?" Freddy asked, wondering if Raoul already had a run in his nylons. That would be a cause for panic, he was certain.

As it turned out, the situation wasn't that dire. "I forgot my bow and arrow in my car," Raoul lamented, smacking himself in his face with the little brown hat. "Can we go back?"

Erik was driving, his hat and plume riding bitch between Freddy and Raoul in the back. "Absolutely not, we are _not _going to be late for this party, I am determined to get parking less than two blocks away, that will _never _happen if we're twenty minutes late."

"Don't worry about it," Ahmed said, reaching under the passenger seat and handing Raoul what appeared to be a bottle of Diet Coke. "It's not that big a deal, I mean, who _isn't _ going to get that you're Robin Hood? Who else wears green tights?"

"Peter Pan?" Freddy supplied without thinking. Raoul bent over in the seat and groaned.

"I'm doomed – no thanks, Ahmed, I'm not thirsty."

The dark skinned cowboy-cum-gothic-hero smiled a little and shook his head. "Not for hydration, man."

Raoul frowned another moment longer before his eyes widened in realization. "Oh..._oh_. Um...I'm a little underage and shouldn't we _not _be drinking and driving - "

"I can't drink," Erik said into the rearview mirror. "That is why I am driving. Anyway, what will the police do to you? Pull you over for illegal consumption of cola?"

"We have a rule," Freddy said, reaching under the seat himself and polishing off half a bottle of what was once Sprite in a quick swig. "If the lights start flashing, you have to finish the entire bottle."

Raoul was still looking doubtfully at the bottle in his hand. "This doesn't seem...smart," he said hesitantly.

"Of course not!" was Ahmed's jocular reply. "But the odds of us being pulled over on the highway are slim to none – as long as Erik goes the speed limit."

"Don't get your panties in a knot, I'm a very safe driver." Well, aside from the road rage, which was why Erik was always more of a passenger than a driver. No one really wanted to deal with swerving into another lane so that Erik could shout more effectively at someone in a nearby vehicle.

Happily enough, the infamously bad Rhode Island drivers behaved themselves and Erik had no cause to tailgate, shout at or otherwise harass their fellow travelers. Parking proved to be just as difficult as Erik had anticipated, and they actually had to switch drivers so that Ahmed could parallel park half a block away from Tim and Chester's place.

Parallel parking was not one of the skills in Erik's considerable repertoire, but he didn't have time to be down on himself for never having learned the technique; he was too busy adjusting the long, curly wig that he used to cover his own hair, which was itself covered with his fabulous hat.

Predictably, Chester was shocked and delighted when he finally saw Erik's outfit. He knew from the missing knife and coat that Ahmed was probably going for some rebel without a cause old west theme and Freddy actually _asked_ him what he would do if he needed to make an Ichabod Crane outfit, but Erik? He knew the stock better than the other boys and managed to pick the little-used pieces, things that Chester would not notice, at a glance were missing. And child, the boy looked _fantastic_.

"Oh, you are just too much," Chester said, gliding right over to Erik and giving him kisses on both cheeks. Normally, the older fellow had to do a bit of leaning up in order to get that accomplished, but he was dressed as Little Edie in a pair of six inch heels. Literary? Perhaps not, but he was the co-host of this party and what he said went. Anyway, she was in a musical, which was why they tacked that final acceptable category on. "Okay, go in, have fun, don't drink and drive – love the nose."

It would have been just a stellar beginning to the evening, if not for Chester's last comment before Madeline dragged him out onto the porch for dancing, "Oh, Raoul, your Peter Pan is so much cuter than Cathy Rigby's!"

Raoul, who had consumed the entire bottle of rum and coke and was already a little pink cheeked as a result, blushed scarlet and glared at Erik. "No one will notice, huh?"

Though he was trying valiantly, Erik failed utterly to hold back his giggles. "Whoops."

Feeling a little dizzy and annoyed, Raoul sank into a chair by the entrance, head in his hands. Through his fingers he glimpsed a short blonde haired girl in _Alice in Wonderland_ blue. "Christine!" Raoul called, reaching out and grabbing her wrist to stop her progress across the room.

The young lady in question smiled broadly at Raoul and seemed to be about to greet him as enthusiastically as he had her, but something of mania shone in his eyes and she thought it best to simply smile at him in a benign sort of way and let him lead the conversation. Her instincts led her right.

"Who do you think I'm supposed to be?"

It really is too bad that 'instinct' is not a synonym for 'insight.' Christine squinted at Raoul for a long moment before venturing a guess, "Peter Pan?"

Raoul released a sound very close to a growl and said, "Robin Hood! Robin. Hood. _NOT _Peter Pan! Does Peter Pan have a moustache? NO! But Errol Flynn does in Robin Hood! And that's who I am – and I _told _you we should have gone back for the bow and arrow!"

Erik just smirked at him and shrugged, "No time. You wanted a ride and we aim to be punctual. You can't have everything."

Frowning angrily, Raoul rose from his chair, feeling that this was a moment that required standing to really get his point across. "You are just..." he trailed off in frustration, looking Erik up and down, trying to come up with some phrase that would perfectly encapsulate his ire. "...an _enormous_ person."

Tossing his artificial curls in a devil-may-care way, Erik just laughed, loud and carefree. Evidently the severity of Raoul's plight was lost on him. Throwing an arm in a brotherly manner about his classmate's shoulders, Erik gave him a condescending smile. "Don't worry about it. I'm sure some buxom young actress here has Peter and Wendy fantasies. Or if not, Sarah will most certainly give you a pity fuck."

Sorelli, always aware of when people were talking about her, chose that moment to strut by (doing her best Holly Golightly) and give Raoul a sly smile. "Aw, I wouldn't have to pity him. Want to go for it, honey? It would be a great crossover."

"Um...no thanks," Raoul said awkwardly, running a hand through his hair and causing his cap to land on the floor behind him. He fumbled around with it for a moment and then straightened up, looking very embarrassed.

Feeling a swell of pity for the young man who hadn't had enough to drink not to feel embarrassed by things anymore, Freddy put his arm about Raoul's waist and tugged him away from Erik and toward the basement. "Come on, babycakes, we need to get you nice and drunk. Where is everyone?" he asked Sorelli, who immediately pointed down at the floor.

"Rec room," she said. "Meg came on ahead of us, Christine and I just got here. I don't know if you guys want to eat something or drink – open bar, if you know what I mean."

Unable to partake of liquid inebriation, Erik shook his head. "I'd rather go downstairs if that's alright with you. I am far too sober at the moment." As if on cue, Ahmed made his way through the crush of people in the foyer, holding something long and awkwardly shaped underneath his coat. "Let's head downstairs."

They paused in their progress just long enough for Sorelli to grab a small bottle of tequila off the bar, checking to make sure that neither Tim nor Chester was looking in their direction. No one else would care, but their hosts were very much _not_ about breaking the law with underage drinking, so if the students fully intended to disregard their teachers' wishes, they had to do so sneakily.

"Did anyone bring anything to mix that with?" Freddy asked on the staircase, eying the bottle warily.

Sorelli laughed. "No way, sweetie. It's shot night!" Christine quietly explained that she agreed to be designated driver, so Sorelli felt that she could drink herself into a stupor with no guilt. Fine, Freddy said, noting that his dancer friend seemed to have done a great deal of pre-gaming before the party began. No _way_ he was holding her hair when she inevitably started vomiting all over the place.


	34. The Night They Invented Champagne

AN: Finally finishing this section! Would have gotten the second bit posted sooner, but it's been a crazy week, I was in a show so things got kind of hectic. I thought now might be a good time to clarify _why_ I changed the spelling of Raoul's last name, so that gets partially explained in this chapter. Really it's because I wanted to pay minor tribute to Lon Chaney and couldn't think of a better way to do it, but I try to explain it plausibly. As far as Christine's last name goes, that's the spelling they use in the Yeston/Kopit musical and I like the double 'e'. Since I'm explaining last names I should probably mention that, Erik's doesn't mean anything in particular, it's a fairly common French Canadian last name in Rhode Island and was the last name of one of my friends from elementary school, so it's a minor tribute to him. As for the Persian, Ahmed is the name of a guy I went to college with and I Googled Iranian last names to come up with 'Yari,' since I didn't want to steal my college friend's entire name.

**Mominator: **Uh, double yeah with regards to the road rage and aggressive!Erik in general. I understand that the character isn't entirely stable, but I don't know why people find the idea of violence appealing in the character, especially violence toward Christine. I would argue that the violence in the book is minimal, but even so, I'd think you'd want to get as FAR away from someone like that as possible. Even though I'm going off the beaten path with the plot of this story, I do want to keep the idea of the characters rooted in the book, so this Erik DOES have mental problems, but like many other people who suffer similarly, he is most definitely on medication for them. Also he does have a soft-spot for comic books, but that has less to do with his pills and more to do with him being a dorky teenage boy ;-)  
**Googleeyes: **I AM SO JEALOUS! _Cyrano_ is my favorite play of all time, the Brian Hooker translation is my favorite, Jose Ferrer is my favorite Cyrano...yeah, this was my self-insertion moment, but I do think the balcony scene would have some serious poigancy for Erik. I have dreams of playing the Orange Girl on stage one day. Break a leg in your show, though, Mme Rageaneau is a great part, you saucy minx, you! I have to admit, the Robin Hood/Pan mix-up actually happened to a friend of mine at a Halloween party last year, so I can't take credit for inventing it. Hope you enjoy this next bit!

* * *

Not intending to be anti-social, the college set fully intended to re-join the main party after an hour or so. They actually being considerate, isolating themselves in the finished basement, a door and flight of stairs away from party central. It was considered, in general, to be against the laws of God and man for adult supervisors to permit mere children to become intoxicated, so the children took it upon themselves to administer the intoxicants, far from the prying eyes of the over-21 set.

Alcohol was the chosen poison for the majority of this crowd, but Ahmed had something special planned for himself, Erik and anyone else who chose to contribute five bucks to the cause. The long, thin apparatus that he hurried through the party with turned out to be a rather impressive looking hookah, with two hoses. "I call it Doublemint," Ahmed said proudly, setting it down in the middle of the circle of pillows, beanbags and squashy chairs that made up the seating in the rec room. "Double your pleasure, double your fun."

"It's a bit like sex," Erik said, hurrying forward to assist Ahmed with preparing their smoke god of choice for the evening. "I imagine. Mouth and lung sex, through an intermediary."

From the corner with her tequila and the vodka Meg, (in costume as a naughty Snow White) had smuggled from home, Sorelli snorted and made some kind of disparaging comment, but no one was really listening to her. Actually, Charlotte (Hester Prynne for the evening) was busy trying to force a non-alcoholic substance into the drink Sorelli was mixing for herself. She was the only one who thought ahead and brought juice.

Freddy was already taking his wallet out to contribute to the pot fund as Erik collected, removing a Ziploc bag filled with a dried greenish-brown herb.

For one wild instant, Christine wondered why Erik brought oregano to the party. Everything became clear though, when she saw the glare that Armand was leveling at him over the black scarf that obscured the lower half of his face.

Armand was annoyed, for a variety of reasons. In the first place, he didn't appreciate the fact that Erik and Ahmed thought it was totally okay to do illegal things in the home of their gracious hosts. In the second, he was frowning and since he had come as Gwynplaine, their criminal behavior was totally ruining his costume. Was it worth it to argue? No, probably not. In any case, there were a few things he was curious about.

"Can you smoke weed out of a hookah?" Armand asked in spite of himself when he saw the boys setting it up.

Ahmed raised both of his brows at him and looked as though Armand had just asked whether he would prefer French fries or coleslaw with that. "I've smoked weed out of an Utz Pretzel container. You can smoke with _anything_, dude."

"You guys are going to ruin your voices. And get _cancer_," Meg predicted ominously.

Erik rolled his eyes. "Please, dear. We're young and stupid, we're not due for cancer or nodes for _decades_ now and by then human beings will be living in pods and have robots doing all our work for us."

"You saw _Surrogates_?" Jamie asked, evidently surprised. But then, that might have just been her make up. She opted for a Harley Quinn costume and the clown get-up was a little extreme. Hey, Harley was in the comic books now, so she _counted, _okay?

"Just the trailer," Erik shrugged. "But it's easy enough to surmise the entire plot. Living vicariously through others is _wrong_. Ironic that's the message they're trying to send in a movie theatre, but I digress."

And digress he certainly did. The next few minutes consisted of everyone trying their damnedest to get a buzz off their poison of choice. Christine abstained, courteously, since she was the DD for her group and Raoul just settled on sipping a beer very slowly, since he had the sneaking suspicion that he was a lightweight and didn't want the rest of the group to find out as well. Simply because he did not aim to get falling-down drunk, however, did not mean that he was going to be ignored.

"So, Rrrrrrrra-oooooul Chaneeeeeey," Freddy drawled, deliberately drawing out the syllables of Raoul's name, complete with a ridiculous affected French accent. "How does one get named Raoul, anyway, how does that happen? I mean, what the fuck, honey, why do your parents hate you?" It was clear that the drug combined with the alcohol was affecting him just a teensy bit.

Similarly tipsy, Raoul just laughed. "I don't think they _hate _me – if anything, they hate my sister. My oldest sister. Her name's Eloise. That's _really_ bad. But yeah, it's just some old family name that my...people, I guess, my dad's people brought with them on the boat...or train, whatever, however people got down here from Quebec. I think we lost a 'g' in my last name somewhere along the way, added an 'e,' though _when_ I couldn't tell you."

"Fascinating," Freddy said, throwing his head back and draining his glass. "_Fascinating_."

Despite what all the best child psychologists might say, college students did _not _actually spend all their time drinking and smoking. Certainly not, that would be boring. They spent all their time drinking and smoking and playing party games!

From the depths of her bag, Charlotte removed a deck of cards, purple and marked on the back in bubble font with the words 'Would You Rather?'

"It's a team-building activity," she explained, setting the deck down in the center of the group. "I mean, the questions are kind of gross and shitty, but whatever, it's fun. So, first question: Would you rather know for certain that God exists or know for certain that God _doesn't _exist?"

A long moment of silence, then Armand voiced what they were all thinking, "What the fuck kind of question is that?"

Charlotte shrugged and looked at the back of the box. "Um, not entirely sure where that one came from. Usually it's just questions like, 'Oh, would you rather eat shit for a week or centipedes for a year?"

Armand was still unimpressed. "I reiterate: What the fuck kind of question is that?"

In her typically to-the-point fashion, Charlotte just punched Armand softly in the arm and said, "Just answer the question, honey, it's not rocket science."

Sighing and pulling his scarf off, Armand took a long drink before he finally said, "I don't know, um...I guess it would be nice to know that there's a god. Or...well, what god are we talking about? Judeo-Christian? Because He can be kind of an asshole. Buddha seems cool. I don't know. And would I have to tell people about God? Like, would I be a prophet? Because I don't want to be some weirdo like William Blake."

"Oh, dude, I fucking _love _William Blake," Erik said on his exhale. "Fucking _love_."

"He was a religious psychopath," Freddy said, taking his turn at Doublemint.

Erik shook his head slowly, clearly Freddy did not understand genius. "Yeah, but he was a cool religious psychopath. Like, most people who claim to have visions are all, 'I've seen God and He is _pissed_,' but not Blake. No, he was all, 'Dudes! I've seen God and He is totally chill. Let's live in peace and social equality for all.' The man was amazing. He was kind of a shitty artist, but his poetry was great."

"Okay, okay, okay, shut the fuck up," Jamie said, cheerfully bringing the room to order in her own, unique way. "Um...Erik, you're next up. Would you rather overthrow a dictatorship or lead one?" Frowning, she flipped the card over in her hand as if hoping to find an alternative question. "Wow, these cards really do suck."

"Lead. Easy," Erik said, leaning back into his beanbag chair, clearly at peace with the world and everything in it. "And then they'd make movies about me in German and it would be awesome. Not the movies. Just the YouTube videos that would come out and make it look like my dictator self hated the last _Harry Potter _book. Only it wouldn't be _Harry Potter_ because that happened already and I'm not a dictator yet."

"And so they haven't made your dictator biopic yet," Freddy concluded sagely.

"Yeah. That's right," Erik nodded and then smiled to himself, sinking deeper into his chair and closing his eyes dreamily. Bean bags were awesome. Rooms should be made of bean bags.

"So..." Ahmed laughed, poking Erik in the side with his toe. "Have you been doing anything other than sitting on your ass all day watching 'Hitler Rants' videos on YouTube?"

"Fuck yes, I have!" Erik declared defensively. "I got this glorious costume together, that takes time and planning, my friend, _time_ and _planning_. I was definitely more productive than the shithead who invented this crappy card game."

"Okay, that question was really bad, I'm asking another one," Jamie said, taking drink of beer. She didn't even bother pulling a card this time, just asked a question off the top of her head. "Erik: who would you least like to come across in a dark alley?"

He didn't even need to think about it. "Sarah Brightman," he replied, opening his eyes and shuddering a little in fear at the prospect

Christine thought that she missed the punchline. "...Sarah Brightman?"

Instead of obliging her and revealing his hidden joke, Erik just nodded and echoed,"Sarah Brightman." It was obvious that others didn't quite understand why he chose this person in particular to fear above all others, so Erik knew that he had a duty to enlighten them.

"She is fucking _scary_," he insisted as Ahmed went back to nursing the hookah, rolling his eyes the whole time and Freddy tried to begin a new thread of conversation that had nothing to do with Would You Rather. "No, no, seriously. If I came across her in a dark alley – I'd rather come across Hannibal Lecter than her. She's _terrifying!_ It's the eyes, she has the scariest eyes I've ever seen. Does she blink? I don't think so. I would _run_ from her. Run screaming home from that alley and hide under my bed and not come out until dawn and the danger had passed."

"So, what exactly is Sarah Brightman going to do to you?" Charlotte asked, still confused. "In an alley. At midnight or whenever you're hanging about in an alley, being a creeper all by yourself."

Erik shuddered ominously. "She might subject me to her singing. That'd do it. In addition to looking at me with her big, frightening, eyes. Like a deer in headlights. An evil, possessed deer. Who can't sing. In a fucking alley. That's scary"

"And she fucked Andrew Lloyd Webber," Sorelli reminded everyone. Then, to clarify the 'why' that inevitably followed that statement, "Apparently he has a _huge_ dick."

This immediately silenced everyone else in the room who was trying steadfastly to ignore this conversation about Sarah Brightman's status as a hideous creature of the night.

"...um," Meg started, first to break the silence. "And you know this _how?" _

Sorelli looked around at the open-mouths and wide, staring eyes and was quick to say, "Well, I mean, _I've_ never fucked him! Sarah Brightman was on _So Graham Norton_ and she said he did. Ew! No way, I would _never_ do him, I'd only have sex with Andrew Lloyd Webber for a _lot_ of money." And then she just folded her arms and took a long sip of her drink, looking like some kind of paragon of virtue.

"It's great that you have morals," Freddy said, shaking his head. "Okay, new game. I propose Make-Out Jenga!"

Meg groaned loudly. "Do we _have_ to? You guys'll all have pot-breath, it's gross."

Freddy shrugged, "You don't have to play, but you might luck-out and get Christine or something."

For her part, Christine was mightily confused by the turn this conversation was taking. Not to imply that she wasn't confused earlier, her confusion was simply rising to an entirely new, uncharted place in her life. "Make-Out Jenga? Is that something you buy at Spencer's or something?" Spencers was a novelty shop that sold small "personal massagers" and other games and cheap toys for happy couples looking to spice up their relationships. Needless to say, Christine had never purchased anything in Spencers, though she couldn't resist taking a little peek in the shop every time she hit up the mall. Just for entertainment purposes.

Erik chuckled darkly. "It comes from the Spencers that resides under Freddy's bed. It's a place that you never want to go if you intend to come out with your virtue intact." Ordinarily, Erik was not terribly excited about the prospect of playing such ridiculous (and awkward) parlor games, but under such circumstances as these, he tended to just sit back and let things happen. It was one of his favorite things about inhaled intoxicants, they gave him the ability to just let things go. He was supposed to be working on doing so naturally in therapy, but this method produced much quicker results.

"Did you bring it?" Ahmed asked, raising a brow at Freddy. He hadn't noticed the other guy bring a bag or anything into the house with him, but then, he'd been worried about smuggling Doublemint past security. Chester could run awfully quickly in those heels, he knew from experience.

"Yeah, it's in the car – it's _always _in the car." Good old Freddy, always ready to prompt a spot of random debauchery at a moment's notice.

Noting Christine and Raoul's looks of confusion, Meg explained, "We were playing Jenga at a cast party...for, I think, _The Music Man_, like, three years ago. And Freddy brought Jenga for us to play since...I don't know, he's like that. So it was late and the guys were high and we didn't want to play Spin the Bottle because that's weird, but weed makes all of them horny – ow! Ahmed, it does. God. Okay, so we all, like, wrote our names on the Jenga blocks and the rules are just normal Jenga, but if you pull a block with someone's name on it and the tower doesn't fall, then you have to make out with them."

"Of course, we'd add you too," Sorelli said, touching up her lipstick with a small smirk as she looked Christine and Raoul over. "You know. To be fair."

Neither Christine nor Raoul looked especially thrilled about the prospect of being added to the illustrious Make-Out Jenga set, but it seemed as if they weren't going to have much of a choice in the matter. "I'll just be a sec!" Freddy shouted as he jogged up the basement stairs. That jogging turned out to be his downfall. Literally. He forgot the shoes he was wearing were too small and slipped on his way up the stairs, slipping half way up and received a nasty rug burn on his chin.

"Oh, _god!_" Freddy wailed, clutching his neck as Erik attempted to pry his fingers off to assess the damage. "I'm _hideous!_ I'm going to have to wear a _bag_ over my head! My _face_, my _beautiful_ face!"

Dramatically and unnecessarily, Erik slapped Freddy right across his ruined face. "Hey!" the boy protested loudly, dropping his hands. "What was that for?"

Erik shrugged. "Got you to stop whining...and you're bleeding. Come on, let's go upstairs, I'll get you some disinfectant and a band-aid."

Predictably, Freddy insisted on being carried. "I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers," he swooned, fluttering his eyelashes as Erik hefted him into his arms with a small grunt.

"You are _so _lucky I'm on a good combination of drugs right now," he groused as he made his way slowly up the stairs. "Otherwise I'd throw you down the stairs." Making his way up the stairs after them, Ahmed grimaced a little. Unlike everyone else who followed to watch the spectacle, he knew that the threat, fondly spoken though it may have been, was nevertheless very true. Was it wrong that he liked Erik best when he was doped up? Probably, but some people were just easier to know when they were on mood stabilizers.

Of course, when they emerged from the basement with a battered and beaten Freddy, they were naturally the focus of the party. Beverly, a beautiful African American woman who joined the company to play Sarah in _Ragtime_ and stayed for the conversation, was first to run over, cooing and fussing over the poor, wounded Ichabod. She had come to the party as Mrs. Lovett and was, in fact, taking her cues from the movie, so Freddy got an eyeful of some pretty and powdered cleavage. The effect was utterly lost on him, naturally, but he appreciated the attention.

Once he was cleaned, disinfected and bandaged, the significantly drunk adults of the party didn't want to let the kids go back downstairs, no no, stay, sit, eat, talk, oh, _Erik's_ here, everybody! _Erik's_ here!

"Erik, play something!" his mother insisted, stumbling over the hem of the long velvet gown she was wearing (Emma Bovary was her character of choice). Erik caught her before she hit the floor, but was quick to let her go as soon as she regained her footing.

"No thanks," he said, folding his arms moodily over his chest. "I'm not your performing monkey."

"Oh, come _on_," she said, dragging him toward the baby grand that was partially covered in half-empty martini glasses. "Gaspard's shitfaced, we _need _you. Oh, I know! Play something from _Gigi_, something everyone knows. It'll be fun!"

Madeline could be awfully persuasive when she wanted something. And by persuasive, well, that was really a more polite way of saying _demanding. _Erik knew that he wouldn't hear the end of it if he didn't lead the company in a brief sing-along, so he finally consented to let himself be dragged to the piano, pushing past at least half a dozen men who'd given into the recent pirate craze in the western world and came decked out as less hot versions of Jack Sparrow (everyone said they were going for Long John Silver, but Erik knew better).

Feeling unnaturally generous, he decided to oblige his mother and played the song he knew she was begging for. Indeed, Madeline didn't even have to hear the end of the introduction before she grabbed the nearest man, (in her case, Beverly's husband John, dressed in full pirate regalia, down to a stuffed parrot sewn to his jacket) and promptly began waltzing with him, singing loudly:

"_The night they invented champagne  
It's plain as it can be,  
They thought of you and me!  
The night they invented champagne  
They absolutely knew  
That all we'd want to do  
Is fly through that sky on champagne!  
And shoult to everyone in sight  
That since the world began  
No woman or a man  
Has ever been as happy as we are tonight!_"

It wasn't long until everyone got into the song, those who knew the lyrics sang and everyone who didn't sing joined in the dancing. Freddy, facial wounds utterly forgotten, grabbed Christine and swept her into an enthusiastic dance. It could hardly be called a waltz considering the fact that she didn't know the steps and she kept tripping, but she smiled broadly and tried to follow along as best she could to the music. She might have been born with a song in her heart, but she certainly didn't have a song in her feet to boast about.

It wasn't long before Erik deviated from musical standards and played to the pirate portion of the party by leading the entire room in a chorus of dirty sea shanties – and naturally he would pick the dirtiest one of all.

"_T'was on the good ship _Venus_, by Christ you should've seen us!_" he sang loudly, a wicked grin on his face as he did. "_The figurehead was a whore in bed sucking a dead man's penis!_"

Insane as it may seem, nearly _all _the room joined in for the chorus, disproving all running polls about the popularity of dirty sea chanties. "_Friggin' in the riggin'! Friggin' in the riggin'! Friggin' in the riggin', there was fuck all else to do!_"

Eager to reclaim his wife after she permitted herself to be swept off her feet by John, Charlie (drunk and also dressed as a pirate), grabbed Maddy by the waist, pulling her into a sloppy embrace and more shouting than singing, added a verse, "_The captain's wife was Mabel and, dammit, she was able to give the crew their daily screw upon the galley table!_"

When a group of actors from the New England area got together, it was inevitable that a dozen or so would have sought, at one time in their lives, seasonal employment at one or more Renaissance faires that traveled through the area. It promised to be a _long_ song.

"You want to get some air?" Raoul shouted at Christine over one of the raunchiest (and most disgusting verses.

"_The cabin boy was Kipper!_"

"What?" Christine asked, making her way to Raoul through the crush of bodies.

"_And my God, he was a nipper!_"

"Outside!"

"_He stuffed his ass with broken glass!_"

"Huh? I can't hear you!"

"_And circumcised the skipper!_"

"Outside! Do you want to go outside?"

"Oh!" Christine said, by now right next to him, flushing red from both the heat in the room and the lyrics of the song. "Yes! Yes, that would be great!"

Awkwardly wading through the sea of people, narrowly avoiding being accidentally molested as Sorelli gave Charlotte a firm slap on the behind and continued the song, "_The captain's daughter Charlotte was born and bred a harlot!_" They managed to get onto the porch, sliding the door behind them at the end of the verse, "_At night her thighs were lily white, by morning they were scarlet!_"

"Whew," Raoul said, eyes shining and forehead glistening slightly with sweat in the light of the full moon. "That's...a party."

Nodding, Christine pulled her headband out of her hair and shook out her long blonde mane. "Yeah, it's crazy. Did you notice all the guys dressed as pirates?"

"I was more distracted by all the guys dressed as women," Raoul said with a nervous laugh. "I went to Catholic school until high school, no _way_ anyone would get away with that."

Christine smiled at him sympathetically. "Wow, so this must be a culture shock for you. With all the...um. Pride. Everywhere. I grew up in theatres, so I'm used to it. I mean, my godmother is a man, so whatever. And Val, my dad's girlfriend, used to date girls, but only in college so I'm not sure if that makes her bisexual or just a drunk."

Even white teeth flashed when Raoul gave her a smile, chortling a little, "Heh, yeah, maybe both? Sorry, I don't know your...Val or whatever. I mean, I'm totally okay with gay people, by school wasn't _that_ conservative. I mean, we did _Pippin_. Not while I was there, in the 80s, but still, I wasn't brought up to...not like gay people, it's just...people are really open here. Which is good. Great. But takes some getting used to."

"I can imagine." Actually, Christine could more than imagine. Liberal youth though she might be, it was still a bit of a shock to walk into a party and be greeted with the sight of your costume teacher's waxed legs in a pair of ankle-snapping heels. Even weirder was to be jealous of how nice your costume teacher's legs looked in those heels. Christine was cursed with slightly big calves for her frame. It was her cross to bear. "But you're doing great. I mean, fitting-in wise."

"You think so?" Raoul asked, looking at her curiously. "I don't know sometimes, I feel like people are humoring me. And I don't think Erik likes me. At all."

Christine tittered a little nervously. She was _sure_ Erik didn't like him, though for the life of her she didn't know why. But it wasn't like you went around _telling_ people when mutual friends didn't like them, it was rude or something. "Erik's just...Erik," she said, rolling her eyes.

"I think he's got a crush on you," Raoul said, oddly seriously for a boy who had a few drinks in him.

This time, Christine laughed outright. "Oh please, Erik? I think he thinks I'm like a pet. Like one of those fluffy dogs people have and let ride around in their purses. But I know who has a crush on _you_," she added, eager to get the subject off of herself. "Sorelli thinks you're hot. She said."

Clearly, Raoul was too naïve to realizes that Sorelli found most people hot and that being singled out was not a particularly valuable compliment for his eyes lit up a bit. "Really? Even though I look like Peter Pan?"

"Even though you look like Peter Pan. You know, the costume's not that bad, and you have the moustache...it's a little crooked though, hang on." One small white hand reached out and smoothed Raoul's facial hair application, fingertips brushing over his lips as she did so. It was an oddly intimate gesture, far more intimate than she intended it to be and she blushed a little.

Luckily, Raoul wasn't that perceptive. "Aw, thanks," he said, smiling crookedly down at Christine. "You're a sweet girl. A nice girl. I'm glad we're friends." And rather clumsily, the drink having shot his coordination a bit, he inclined his head to give Christine a kiss on the cheek. He missed and landed on the corner of her mouth.

Christine started a little and looked up at Raoul with wide eyes, a myriad of conflicting thoughts running through her head.

_Did he mean to do that? Was he aiming for my lips? Should I kiss him back? Does my breath smell weird? What was the last thing I ate? It's cold out here, are my nipples sticking out? Is that a good thing? Or is that just gross? Do boys like nipples? Boys like nipples. But that's still awkward. Should I kiss him back? What do I say? Do I say anything? Should he say something. What do you even say? Thank you? Thank you for what? Wanting me to be your friend? Do you kiss your friends like that? Wait a minute. He's drunk. He's not even going to remember this in the morning, he probably didn't know what he was doing, he probably doesn't know who I am right now, so -_

The awkward moment gods chose this moment to smile upon Christine, for Meg chose that moment to throw open the sliding glass door exclaiming gleefully, "Guys! Come on inside, you're missing all the fun, Maddy and Chester are dancing on the table, Tim is _so_ mad, their heels are scratching it all up!"

And so the two friends went back inside, one so happy that he had friends at all in this crazy mixed-up world and the other, having gotten over her friendship appreciation about a month ago, just feeling crazy and mixed-up.


	35. Science Fiction, Double Feature

AN: And I'm back! Crazy week, work's been insane, but I couldn't abandon this little plot bunny, especially when I have such a season-appropriate chapter for you lovely people. If anyone's been missing Christine, she features here and...well, I won't give anything away, but suffice it to say, she makes a very silly decision. Horror, horror, horror!  
**Googleeyes: **Fear not! Make-Out Jenga will make a triumphant return, though the couplings might not work out exactly to everyone's tastes (let alone Erik's!)  
**Mominator: **That sea chanty is definitely NOT something I made up (and I just realized, I TOTALLY misspelled 'chanty' in that chapter). It's called 'The Good Ship Venus' or, alternatively, 'Friggin' in the Riggin',' which is the version the Sex Pistols made famous and the first version I heard. As for dorky Erik...well, you're in good company, this Erik would certainly take affront to the notion that he is anything less than mysterious and cool.

Disclaimer: None of the characters from any incarnation of _Phantom of the Opera_ belong to me. Nor am I affiliated with Facebook. Any musicals, books, plays, movies, people or places referenced by me are the property of their respective owners. I am making no money off the utilization of anything with a copyright. Also, I do not condone the practice movie hopping, nor do I recommend that anyone try it at Cinemaworld. They really beefed up security there recently, you're much more likely to get caught.

* * *

_Michael Rennie was ill the day the earth stood still,  
But he told us where we stand.  
And Flash Gordon was there in silver underwear.  
Claude Raines was the invisible man.  
Then something went wrong for Fay Wray and King Kong,  
They got caught in a celluloid jam.  
Then at a deadly pace, it came from outer space.  
And this is how the message ran:_

_Science Fiction - Double Feature  
Dr. X will build a creature  
See androids fighting Brad and Janet  
Ann Francis stars in Forbidden Planet  
Oh-oh, at the late night, double feature, picture show.  
_

_-The Rocky Horror Show_

"Why are we _seeing_ this?!" Christine shrieked in abject horror. "Why are you _letting me see this?!_"

Erik just threw back his head and laughed, a long, loud terrible sound. It might have gone on for hours, for days! Might have. Had Ahmed not thrown a considerable handful of popcorn at him and said, "Shh, we're missing it!"

"Missing what?" Erik asked, shaking kernels out of his hair. "Shrieking?"

"She's on a _hook_," Christine moaned head in her hands, catching glimpses of the brutality between her fingers. "Why is she on a _hook?_ Why didn't he just hit her in the head with the hammer like the other guy?"

"_Because_," Ahmed explained patiently, "he's not ready for her yet, he has to chop up her boyfriend first, she's just on standby."

It was the Monday before Halloween. Monday was a dark day in the theatre, they had no afternoon classes. The intention that afternoon had not actually been to scare the shit out of Christine with old horror movies, actually it had been to congregate at Erik, Ahmed and Freddy's abode to rehearse for their final scene showing Wednesday, but it hadn't gone according to plan. Freddy had to stay two hours overtime at the coffee shop, Armand had to work, Sorelli had a date, Charlotte just didn't feel like rehearsing and Meg had dance, but promised she'd swing by later. In the end, Ahmed, Erik Christine and Raoul were the only ones who'd turned up on time and only Christine and Erik had a scene together.

In Erik's defense, even if they had spent the evening being good little theatre doobies, as the plan was originally, Christine _still _would have had the crap scared out of her. She and Erik were rehearsing a particularly tense scene from _Boy Gets Girl_, wherein Christine played a hapless workaholic and Erik played the high-strung asshole who was stalking her. It was a very powerful play, but there were only so many times that Erik could pin her to a wall, leering down at Christine with a tight grin and spitting into her face, "You could fall in love with me. I'm a very _charming_ guy," before it started to lose its edge.

As most rehearsals outside of the theatre tended to do, this one was over and done with within fifteen minutes and they quickly fell into deciding what _else _they wanted to do with their evening. Though_ The Texas Chain Saw Massacre_ had been Erik's idea, the topic of horror movies was actually first mentioned by Raoul, of all people. It started innocently enough. Raoul suggested that, if they weren't doing anything else, they should all go see a movie together. Christine wanted to see _Whip It, _but the boys weren't too keen on a feel-good movie wherein roller derby played a prominent role. _Paranormal Activity _was another option, Raoul quickly interjected, not wanting to dismiss Christine's idea totally out of hand. Their 'Demand It' campaign had succeeded and it was playing up at Cinema World in Lincoln.

"They only charge, like, eight bucks for students," Raoul said, turning deliberately away from Christine as he did so, but Erik was already shaking his head to shoot him down.

"I'm not paying more than two for that shit show," he groused. "It's, like, _Blair Witch_ meets The Discovery Channel, it's going to suck and I, for one, am not wasting my money. Especially if it's not going to be a Double Feature Tuesday."

Double Feature Tuesday, as Erik called it, was a reference to the movie-hopping that often occurred among their set on Tuesday evenings at theatres with lax security. Take advantage of the already low price and see as many movies as you can squeeze into an evening. Legal? Not entirely, but rewarding? Oh, most definitely.

But it was _not_ a Double Feature Tueday and in these difficult economic times, students did not want to pay eight dollars to see shitty, over-hyped horror movies. They wanted to pay no money and watch totally awesome vintage horror at home. That was what led Erik to break out his horror collection and pop that particular little exploitation gem into the DVD player, once he discovered that neither Raoul nor Christine had ever seen the movie.

"I saw the remake," Raoul said, in his defense once Ahmed gave him a pop-eyed look of pitying wonder.

"Not the same," he said, lowering his eyes and shaking his head sadly at Raoul's lack of slasher-exposure. "Not even remotely the same."

And sure enough, it was not. The Leatherface in the new movie was diseased, pitiful, picked-on. The Leatherface in this movie? A cross-dressing butcher. And that was horrifying.

"But why doesn't he talk?" Raoul asked, looking just as squeamish as Christine, even if he had the manly fortitude necessary to cover his eyes as Pam popped out of the freezer.

"Oh, _God_, can you imagine this movie if Leatherface talked?" Freddy asked as he walked in, doffing his apron and settling down on the futon next to Christine. "He'd just _bitch _at everyone, like, 'Why the fuck are you people in my house? Can you _believe_ what a mess it is in here? My brothers are such _pigs._' You know he has to do all the domestic crap."

"Brothers?" Christine looked away from the screen in confusion. "What brothers? You mean there's more of him?"

"Oh, wow," was Ahmed's sarcastic reply. "I'm _really_ glad we're watching this movie together guys. I'm _really_ glad we're talking through the _entire fucking thing_ and spoiling the ending. Really fucking glad."

"Oh, get a grip," Freddy said, rolling his eyes. "It's not like this is great cinema. Now, if we talked through _Citizen Kane?_ Sure, bitch at me. But this is _Texas Chain Saw Massacre_."

Erik snorted, an odd, slightly muffled sound. "Oh, please. _Citizen Kane _sucks. All due respect to Orson Welles, but that movie is dull. Once you know what "Rosebud" is, it's pointless to see."

"I don't know what that is," Raoul piped up, honestly curious. "I've never seen it."

"It's a sled," Erik said before anyone could stop him. "It's a goddamn sled and everyone thinks it's all really important and it's _not. _It's a cop-out and now you never have to see the movie. So I saved you three hours of grief. You'll thank me for that someday."

"Did you know that James Cameron has effectively killed, like, fifty people?"

The room actually went quiet at Freddy's non-sequitur. At least as quiet as a room could get while there was a chainsaw massacre going on in the background. This gave him the confidence to go on. "Yeah, I read it on the internet. Not, like, he _actually_ killed people, but the amount of time people spent watching _Titanic_ – the amount of time they wasted, actually – adds up to approximately fifty lifetimes. Or something."

Christine looked miffed at that piece of news. "I like _Titanic_," she admitted softly. What she neglected to add was not only did she like it, she cried every time she saw it. And she had seen it seven times.

Erik looked as though he _dearly _wanted to comment on that, but wisely held his tongue. In that moment, Christine was acutely reminded that she was in a room, alone with four boys and that sucked just a little bit, that there was no one there who would back her on the sublime glory that is _Titanic_. What was not to love? Sweeping score, beautiful costumes, majestic sets, timeless love story, the glorious romantic chemistry between Kate and Leo...guh. Made her well up just thinking of it. Luckily, in that moment, a shot of estrogen breezed into the living room.

"Hey guys!" Meg said brightly, throwing her duffle bag full of sweaty dance clothes onto the floor near the door. Christine smile was extra-warm for her roomie. At last, someone feminine to douse the fire of machismo that had been alighted all around her!

"Oh, _Texas Chain Saw Massacre!_ Awesome! And I'm just in time to watch Franklin get sliced up, sweet! He always annoyed the shit out of me." As Meg squeezed onto the sofa between Christine and Freddy, the blonde girl's heart sank a little. Maybe she wasn't going to be the ray of feminine sunshine Christine hoped she'd be.

The death toll rose, the screams both on-screen and in the living room abounded and the movie ended abruptly, as it should, one lone psychopath dancing in the sunlight. There were a few moments of silence, both of the stunned and satisfied variety before Raoul ventured a question.

"So...that was it?"

It was the wrong question.

"What do you mean 'That was it?'" Erik asked, disgusted.

It should be noted that Raoul didn't have a very strong sense of self-preservation. "Well, I mean...that's how the movie ends? He just...gets away? I don't get it. Why did they do that to her? Who were those people? Why did it...I mean, there's no ending."

"There was an ending," Ahmed replied, with furrowed eyebrows. "You just saw it. He dances with the chainsaw and she freaks out in the back of a truck. That's how it ends. What's not to get?"

"But _why_ were they doing that?"

"Because they're crazy and in-bred. Next question."

"That's no excuse!" Clearly, the movie had tapped into some deep well of moral justice that lay within Raoul.

"That's the movie," Erik shrugged, rising to turn the lights back on and remove it from the DVD player. "Sometimes crazy people do things for no reason. And annoying people die. I like it best when annoying people die."

"That was fun!" Meg declared enthusiastically, nudging Christine in the ribs. "Wasn't that fun?"

Looking quite green around the gills, Christine had only one question for her. "What's your opinion of _Titanic_?"

"Oh, I _love_ that movie!" Meg gushed. "It's so romantic, I cry every time I've seen it – and I've seen it five times, at least. Why?"

For the first time in half an hour, Christine smiled, "Just checking. No reason."

Crouched over his DVD shelf, Erik looked up at the crowd, holding up a slim black box with a pale man in black on the cover, nails sticking out from various places on his face. "Anybody up for some _Hellraiser_ next?" he asked, something of an evil grin on his face.

Christine didn't know anything about the Hellraiser franchise, but she recognized the face of Pinhead immediately and instinctively knew that this was not a movie she needed to see if she planned on sleeping any time within the next decade. Raoul was shaking his head slowly, but Freddy provided the most vocal resistance.

"Oh, no – _hell _no, that movie is sick and you are sick for liking it."

"You just have to have a sense of humor about it," Ahmed advised, holding out a hand for the box and looking at the back cover curiously. "You can't take it too seriously...does this version have an audio commentary?"

"Not take it _seriously_?" Freddy squeaked. "Um, excuse me, BDSM weirdos come up from the bowels of hell to rape my soul if I solve their Rubik's Cube? No way. It's scary and gross and we're not watching it. Veto. I veto this movie, right now. As the executive branch of this house."

"The legislative branch can override you," Erik reminded him from his cross-legged position on the floor.

"Uh, sure, but the executive branch can refuse to do the judicial branch's laundry for the next forever and then we'll see how he interprets your laws," Freddy said with a significant look at Ahmed. Clearly this was a sophisticated system that the boys had implemented for the smooth running of their house. Idly, Christine wondered when their Civil War would start up.

Fear of dirty socks overriding love of gore, Ahmed was forced to hand the movie back to Erik, shaking his head sadly. "Never mind. Maybe some other time when it's just us and the innocent souls don't fear corruption."

Incredibly and rather stupidly, Christine took immediate offense to that. "Hey!" she said, sitting up and looking rightly affronted. "I'm not...that innocent. I'll watch it."

Freddy looked mortified. "Now is not the time to be brave, honey. Trust me. Once you see that movie, you can't un-see it. You want to watch _The Strangers_? It's probably on HBO right now, it's scary, but not...like that."

She would not be moved. "No, really, I'm not a baby or anything. It's just a movie. The last one wasn't...so bad." Lies. A fountain of lies that she was going to drown in if she wasn't careful, but Christine was well beyond the realm that most people considered the safe, fluffy world of sanity. It was getting tiresome, the niche she'd fallen into in this group. Naturally, she was grateful to have a niche, but being the Good Girl got a little boring from time to time and Christine began to fear that they would think she was boring. Maybe that was why Raoul hadn't said anything or done anything or even _implied_ anything about that kiss from so many days ago. He just thought she was Plain Jane, good, boring Christine who wouldn't want to talk about it, or think about it, or _do _anything about it. And she wasn't. She could hang with the guys, she could kiss boys, she could watch a horror movie, for crying out loud. It was _only _a movie. How bad could it honestly be?

"Are you sure, Christine?" Erik asked, looking at her with something like admiration in his eyes. Or it might have been pity, whatever it was, it only served to strengthen her resolve.

"Sure," she said, shrugging carelessly and settling back down on the futon with her Diet Coke. "I'll be fine – if Freddy can handle it, I mean."

Freddy shook his head and got up from the couch, heading toward the door at a brisk walk. "Fine, fine, crazy people, I'll watch your clusterfuck torture porn movie, whatever, but I'm going to need a serious drink first. Don't worry about starting the movie without me, I'll be up when I get a buzz."

In an unexpected show of compassion, Erik next turned his gaze on Raoul, though his eyes glinted oddly and he got a curious half-smile on his face as he asked, "And you? Along for the ride or do you want to just leave now and slumber in relative peace."

The truth was, Raoul was already too afraid of the human-skin wearing, chainsaw wielding murders who might be lurking in the suburbs of Warwick to venture home alone tonight, but it wasn't like he could actually admit that, could he? "I"ll stick it out," he said with a nervous smile. Then got up to join Freddy for that drink.

Beginning to see the error of her ways already, Christine turned to Meg with a slightly worried expression on her face. "It's...it's not _that_ bad, right?" she asked, nibbling her lower lip delicately.

Meg only shrugged. "I don't think it's that bad, I think it's cool, but I'm a total horror slut. I don't know, just keep telling yourself, it's only a movie."

"It's only a movie," Christine repeated confidently, as Erik didn't hesitate looking for an audio commentary and went right into the Play Movie option. "It's only a movie."


	36. Toucha Toucha Toucha Touch Me

AN: I'M SORRY! SORRYSORRYSORRY! I work in a pretty Halloween-specific line of business and things went nuts in my life this week, so I couldn't finish up the seasonal section in time. I've got one more Halloweeny bit to share after this one, then I promise Erik and Co. will catch up to the rest of us in the real world. (Writing a real-time fic is challenging, people, never do it.) As a result, I scrambled to put this bit together, so forgive me if it seems slightly rushed and decidedly un-clever in places. But hey, the kids can't be witty ALL the time, can they? And now, my faithful reviewers, I love you all! (And I KNOW more of you are reading this, please do drop me a comment if you have the time, keeps me motivated and makes me smile):

**The Little Corinthian: **It is a rather twisted film, isn't it? But I confess, I am sick as well since I LOVE those movies! I think they're interesting and actually kind of funny if you have a very specific, mildly off-kilter sense of humor. At least the Cenobites need to be summoned, unlike other movie villains who just _turn up_ without any apparent provocation.  
**Mominator124: **Ha, as far as Freddy is concerned, she's on her own. She brought this on herself, he _tried_ to tell her, but would she listen? _No_, Miss Thing just had to get her little feminist panties in a twist and demand to watch a scary horror movie like one of the guys. Yes, Meg is a guy. It takes serious balls to watch that movie without dry heaving. And thanks for the editing advice, I did replace it with new, correct spelling.  
**TrashedXandXScattered: **Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it! I hope this update is "soon" enough for you. And I'm glad you like Erik, he's one of those people who is incredibly difficult to know, but rewarding to know, if that makes any sense. He's one of my more interesting characters to write, his dialogue and actions always come very quickly to me, but it's harder to write his thoughts. I channel Christine's mind more easily, but weirdly enough, I'm never sure exactly what she's going to say.

**Disclaimer:** I think we all get it by now. Phantom? Not mine. My pop-culture references? Not mine. Do I own Jenga? No, though I was part of a game wherein the notion of Make-Out Jenga was born, so I suppose I can claim partial ownership of that, but I'm still not making money from this.

* * *

_I was feeling done in, couldn't win  
I'd only ever kissed before.  
I thought there's no use getting into heavy petting  
It only leads to trouble and seat wetting..._

_Now all I want to know is how to go  
I've tasted blood and I want more  
I'll put up no resistance, I want to stay the distance  
I've got an itch to scratch, I need assistance:_

_Toucha toucha toucha touch me, I wanna be dirty  
Thrill me chill me fulfil me  
Creature of the night._

_-The Rocky Horror Show_

It wasn't just a movie. It was a _nightmare_. A phantasmagoria of blood, gore, hell, sweat, tears and lust all with a vaguely kinky overtone of great pain.

It was only twenty minutes into the movie before Christine gave up all pretense of bravery and proceeded to hide her face in Erik's sleeve, stubbornly not glancing curiously at the screen during any curse, howl of agony or blasphemous dialogue. No matter _how _tempted she was to look.

Besides, by the time Freddy and Raoul returned, suitably trashed, Freddy gave a running commentary of the entire movie that was graphic enough for Christine's churning stomach.

"Oh, _shit_, he doesn't have any fucking skin! I forgot he didn't have any fucking skin! What the _fuck _is wrong with this movie?"

"I don't have any idea, but I'm sure you'll tell us," Erik grumbled, sinking into the couch and discreetly trying to move away from Christine, who had latched onto his arm as though it was a spindly, oversized quilt to hide under. His escape attempts were entirely thwarted, however, when Christine proceeded to follow him, stubbornly clinging to his arm without looking up even for a moment.

Movie night was turning out to be decidedly not fun. Meg was watching the movie with all the interest of a long-time fangirl, but she appeared to be the only one having any fun. The look on Ahmed's face as Freddy drunkenly expounded on every skinless exploit and every demonic growl clearly communicated the fact that, if he didn't shut up, soon _he _would be the one lacking all dermal structures.

"I'm bored," Erik declared airily, earning a horrified look from Raoul.

"You're _bored?_" he asked, a kind of awed wonder in his tone. "How...how can you be _bored?_" For Raoul was feeling may emotions at the moment, none of them close to boredom, predominantly he feared of the sort of company he was keeping. People who had these sorts of movies in their house were just not normal.

Actually, it was quite easy. Watch a movie enough times, it begins to lose its edge. Watch a movie enough times with people who don't appreciate it, then it gets downright annoying.

Honestly, _Hellraiser_ was a terrific movie to watch while getting high out of one's mind, it brought back some of the old sense of excitement and surprise of the first time viewing. Mostly because he forgot the sequence of action in the movie and so every arrival of a Cenobite was a surprise and Pinhead just became so much _cooler_ when the world was slightly blurry around the edges. Removing Christine from his shirt with minor difficulty, Erik stood up and crossed to the DVD player, turning the machine off entirely. Frowning a bit over his shoulder at his friends, Erik offered blandly, "So, that was too intense. Want to watch _It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown_? I mean, it's kind of intense, Christine, you might want to leave the house now - "

Whatever else he was going to exaggerate with was cut off when Christine threw one of the couch cushions at Erik's head. "You're such a jerk," she said, peeking out between the fingers of her left hand (her non-throwing hand) to assure herself that the devil movie was well and truly gone. Erik's only response to that accusation was to grin hideously at her. Not to be out-done, Christine replied by sticking her tongue out at him. Much maturity abounded this pre-Halloween eve.

Not to be outdone by the conspicuous show of adult behavior from the others, Freddy had a suggestion for how to pass the rest of the night. In his semi-intoxicated state, it seemed like a fantastic plan, especially considering that just two weeks ago, this suggestion had been ruined as a result of his own clumsiness.

"Guys!" he shouted, just a _little_ too loudly for the size of the room and the number of occupants.

"Ow." That was Ahmed, holding his ears and looking more than usually disgruntled.

"Sorry, but I think we should play Make-Out Jenga!" With his eyes alight and teeth gleaming as he grinned hugely at everyone in the room, it was difficult not to fall under the spell of Freddy's charisma.

Meg succeeded, however. She was pissed that the movie had been turned off, it was a horror classic and they hadn't even gotten to the hospital scene which was one of the _best_ scenes in the movie, in her humble opinion. One of the best scenes in _any_ horror movie and they ruined it because her roomie was a pussy (but a quiet pussy) and Raoul and Freddy were drunk. She was rather over this little get-together and had been thinking about going back to the dorms and watching it illegally on the internet. Since Freddy had ruined her movie experience, she had little to no interest in kissing him.

"No," she denied flatly. "I don't want to get the swine flu."

"None of us have the swine flu," Christine countered, quite reasonably. Make-Out Jenga sounded like a much better idea than watching movies about sexually confused demons. Or whatever they were, she hadn't really been paying attention. Watching horror movies wasn't the way to prove that she was an autonomous adult-person who could kiss people and feel nothing. Like certain blonde haired, blue eyed boys who grinned vaguely when people brought up Make-Out Jenga. Little did Christine know that Raoul's vacant expression and slightly twitchy appearance was due to the rather large Jägerbomb Freddy had concocted for him, without Raoul's permission. She might have been more sympathetic if she had known, since she currently thought that he was just a big jerk. A bigger jerk than Erik and that was quite a feat since Erik was one of the biggest jerk to have ever jerked.

"_Meg_," Freddy whined dramatically, flopping face-first onto the floor, crawling pathetically over to her. "Come _on_. _Please. _It'll be _fun!_"

Meg sighed dramatically, but gave in. Watching horror movies alone in the dorm was a rather depressing idea. Besides, she might walk in on Sorelli having a midnight tryst (_again_) and that was just _awkward._ She saw enough of Sorelli's ass and tits in the dressing room, it was not necessary to see that much of her friend that often. Or that much of her boyfriends. Sorelli didn't really have a 'type,' but recently she'd been seeing a lot of Guidos from New Jersey. They tended to be a hairy bunch of boys and they made the room smell of Abercrombie and Fitch cologne for days afterward. It gave Meg a headache which was why she had been spending so much time at the boys' house to begin with. They might be obnoxious, but at least they didn't smell weird.

Then, naturally, Ahmed broke out the pot and invalidated Meg's previous commendation. "I need it," he said defensively when she gave him a piercing look. "If I'm going to be kissing you people, I need to be under the influence."

Meg rolled her eyes. "If you need to get up in the morning you need to be under the influence. You guys are so not able to cope with life. Maybe if you sought out your therapists more often - "

"Silence, Nancy Reagan," Erik insisted as he cracked a few windows. Christine, Meg and Raoul declined the use of herbal enhancement, though the girls did agree to sample some mixed drinks, courtesy of Freddy's limited bartending skills. Unlike Raoul, however, they did not gulp their beverages quickly, but took slow slips, trying not to wince too visibly. Freddy was awfully generous with the rum.

Make-Out Jenga was a game simple is set-up and even simpler in execution. Once Raoul and Christine's names were added to blank wooden blocks in Sharpie, they set up the typical Jenga tower and proceeded to...play Jenga. It really was that simple. Naturally, the game was a bit more difficult when the players' coordination was not exactly up to standard for individuals of their age, but nevertheless, it was fairly straightforward. Since there were a number of blocks that featured the names of individuals who were not present at that particular game, there were a few fairly subdued rounds.

At least until Charlotte's name was pulled, prompting Freddy to shout, "WAIT!" as Christine tried to put the block back on the top of the tower, nearly toppling the whole game then and there. He bolted from the room, running into the bathroom and drawing some strange looks. Well, Christine's face looked strange because she had a tendency to stick her tongue out and look a bit cross-eyed when she was concentrating. Everyone else just looked confused and wondered where Freddy had disappeared to.

The bathroom was, evidently, the answer to that unasked question since he ran back into the room not a minute later, shirt stuffed with two rolls of toilet paper. "I'm Charlotte!" he pronounced happily, sticking his newly-endowed chest out proudly a second before he pounced on Christine. "Kiss me, you fool!"

It was a rather bad kiss, all things told. Freddy's new boobs dug awkwardly into Christine's own chest and she narrowly avoided banging her head really hard against the couch. Also, as Raoul had done only a few weeks before, Freddy half-missed her mouth and wound up licking the side of her nose, totally accidentally. What was this? Was her mouth partially deformed or something? Asymmetrical? Was there a _reason_ she had never been kissed properly?

When Freddy went up for air, Christine discreetly wiped her face off with her sleeve. Ew. Now her face smelled like beer. Totally gross. Maybe they should go back to watching the gender confused bondage demons.

It was Erik's turn now and though he was just as fucked up as the rest of the group by this point, his coordination seemed to be slightly better. He removed his block, eyebrows shooting up slightly as he squinted at the name. "Sorry Christine," he said, shrugging a little and unfolding himself from where he had been sitting cross-legged on the floor.

It took Christine a moment to realize that Erik was going to kiss _her _and she groaned a little internally, not really wanting any more boy-slobber on her face. Maybe she should orient her lips a little to the left. Make for a better target this time.

Erik had the courtesy not to knock his intended victim to the floor. Rather he crouched down next to her, tilting her chin up and urging Christine to sit up on her knees to make the angle less awkward. She didn't have time to twist her lips before Erik's were upon them, but she did close her eyes, just in case the unnatural planes of her face made him slip and poke his tongue into her eye or something.

As it turned out, she needn't have worried. Say what you might about Erik's sexiness factor, the fact could not be denied that he was a _damn _good kisser. Or maybe it was just because her previous two experiences had been so decidedly...wet. By contrast, Erik's lips were a little dry, but had a surety and confidence that Freddy and Raoul both lacked, respectively. Well, Freddy made up for his lack of surety with an abundance of confidence. Erik just...kissed her. Very, very well. When Christine felt his tongue dart out between his lips however, she pulled back with a surprised squeak, causing Erik to back off as well with a crooked smile on his face.

"Oh, come now, Christine," he teased, sitting back on his haunches. "The name of the game is _Make-Out_ Jenga, after all."

She was bright red at this point and watching all of her fantasies of maturity fly freely out the window. In tutus. Bright pink ballerina tutus with ribbons in their hair. God, she was such a little girl. "Sorry!" she blurted out, taking a long sip of her drink for liquid courage. "We could...we could try that again?"

But Ahmed was shaking his head. "Uh-uh, little girl," he said, wagging his finger. "It's like chess. You put the piece down, you can't pick it back up."

Erik just grinned again and sat down next to her, staring dreamily up at the ceiling, cheerful and at peace. This wasn't a game he minded, curiously enough, considering the fact that he was not one for having people invade his personal space. This a safe invasion of personal space, done in the spirit of competition which Erik was more than comfortable with. Besides, turnabout being fair play, he was free to invade the space of others and make them uncomfortable, one of his personal favorite pastimes.

It appeared that he would get to exercise his discomfiting muscles when Raoul pulled his name. Up until this point, the blonde boy looked happy enough, having lived through Meg pouncing into his lap knees first and possibly permanently effecting his ability to procreate. Now he bit his lip and looked worriedly up at Erik who was already moving toward him with a slightly predatory gleam in his eyes.

"Don't look so glum, chum," the taller boy said and never before had a rhyming endearment sounded so threatening. Deftly avoiding Raoul's manhood, Erik straddled the shorter (if slightly broader) young man, tilting his chin up none too gently. "This won't hurt a bit," he reassured Raoul, smiling just briefly enough to show his teeth before he planted one on him.

It seemed to last an awfully long time, long enough that the other players began to worry that perhaps Erik was trying to strangle Raoul with his tongue. Hadn't the Peter Pan costume incident been punishment enough? When would the madness cease? Ahmed was in the process of crawling over to them, ready to pry Erik off with the jaws of life if necessary, but at that moment, the boys broke apart. Erik wore an expression of utter self-satisfaction while Raoul just looked slightly dazed – moreso than usual, anyway.

As if in a trance, he brought his hand up to his lips and Meg asked him, a trace of genuine worry in her voice, "Did he bite you?"

That snapped Raoul out of it, well and truly. He blinked at Meg as if he only realized she was there. "Nah," he said, lowering his hand and smiling sheepishly at her. "No blood." Clearing his throat somewhat awkwardly, he directed his gaze at Freddy and asked, "Uh, do you have any more of that Jägerstuff? I think I need more. A lot more."


	37. Rose Tint My World

AN: Quick update! I've had the bulk of this chapter written for months now and I've been trying to find a good place to squeeze it in. I'll make no bones about it: I LOVE this chapter, I think it's hilarious. You don't have to, you can be repulsed, but this is certainly...revelatory. On many levels.

**Mominator: **Oh, don't worry, the boys aren't THAT stupid. Intoxicated!Raoul + shiny new car = lawsuit. And they can't afford the court fees.  
**Googleeyes: **Yep, that's the game! It was invented in my sophomore year of high school, it began as 'chaste kiss on the cheek Jenga' then by the next year it deteriorated into full-on Make Out Jenga and by my senior year we dropped the pretense and played Spin the Bottle. And hee! I'm glad you caught the sort of, not really reference to PoM. Never fear! Raoul's baby making parts are fully intact. Not that he wants to make any babies right now, but he will not be stepfathering any illegitamate children named Pierre. Or whatever, I've never actually read that one, I just know the plot.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Phantom, not making any money and don't drink and drive. Or smoke weed and drive. Just don't drive under the influence. That's my PSA.

* * *

_It's beyond me  
Help me, Mommy  
I'll be good, you'll see  
Take this dream away  
What this Let's see...  
I feel sexy!  
What's come over me?  
Woo! Here it comes again!_

_-The Rocky Horror Show_

Now, Erik, Ahmed and Freddy could all three be irresponsible, but not so irresponsible that they condoned the act of drinking and driving. Once they were sick of Make Out Jenga, the boys insisted that Meg, Christine and Raoul bed down at their house and would not hear a word of protest. Not entirely unexpectedly, Raoul (who was the most trashed) insisted most fervently that he really didn't _need_ to stay and that he could _so _drive himself. Freddy swiped his keys in the kitchen and refused to return them, so it was a non-issue and he was quickly settled comfortably in a recliner while Meg and Christine were fortunate enough to share the Futon of Doom.

As was the usual state of affairs, there was an unspoken confidentiality clause that was enacted during every game of Make Out Jenga. When the first tendrils of dawn crept into the living room, the events of the night previous were washed away, if not from everyone's minds, then at least from their conversation. As Meg had explained to Christine the night of the Halloween party, after the game had been abandoned, "It's just a game. It's not like it _means_ anything."

That was actually how the Armand/Charlotte Wall of Silence had begun, he and Freddy kissed during a game played during winter break of their senior year of high school and that set Charlotte's matchmaking schemes into action. Since then it was decided that it was just better not to bring it up after the fact.

This was the manner in which the rest of the week was conducted, business as usual, until Saturday rolled around. All Hallows Eve, the night when the veil between the realms of the living and the dead was the thinnest and spirits would roam abroad. And what did the boys want to do to commemorate this most unholy of days? Take a field trip to Roger William's Park and dress up statues.

"You know, other people dress statues up in clothes," Charlotte pointed out at Erik's suggestion. "They're called 'window dressers' and their statues are mannequins."

Erik had no idea what one had to do with the other."Yeah," he admitted, "but the statues aren't _expecting_ it. We have the element of surprise on our side."

It was a common occurrence to be met with some resistance to AA. Not everyone possessed the level of artistic sophistication necessary to appreciate their statue clothing endeavors and really, it had been so _long_. This was going to have to be an AA session of epic proportions, which meant all hands on deck, which meant throwing a Halloween party that would last just long enough to get everyone slightly tipsy and open to suggestion.

With Freddy acting as the expert mixologist for the evening, tipsiness was definitely on the menu. As usual, Erik didn't imbibe, but he'd been saving his best weed for that evening and was high as a kite by the time _It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown_ was over and if the others weren't exactly three sheets to the wind, they were definitely on sheet number two by now.

"Guys!" Erik shouted, a glimmer of madness lurking just behind his eyes which reflected the blue light of the television oddly. "Let's go to Narnia!" With Ahmed's keys in his hands, rising to his full height in front of the television, he looked like some vengeful Halloween spirit himself, gaunt and terrible and the gang eagerly accepted this new god as their own.

A great war whoop greeted that improbable suggestion and someone, Sorelli, most likely, added over the pandemonium, "As long as I get to fuck Mr. Tumnus!"

As they piled into the van, Christine grabbed Ahmed's sleeve and held him back for a moment. His bloodshot eyes locked onto her clear blue ones bemusedly as she asked, "Uh, is he okay to drive?" Was that a stupid question? Yeah, she wasn't really up on what intoxicants produced what kind of reaction, but you weren't supposed to operate heavy machinery on Tylenol PM, so smoking pot and whatever out of a purple bong and driving an enormous thirty year old van wasn't terribly smart. And if something wasn't terribly smart, Ahmed would surely stop Erik since that was what Ahmed _did_.

Normally. Sober!Ahmed and High!Ahmed, though still definitely Ahmed, had slightly different standards for safety. Sober!Ahmed probably would have hidden the keys about an hour ago. High!Ahmed just shook Christine's arm off and put a hand at her back to urge her into the car, laughing all the while. "Nah, don't worry, hun, he's just fine. We're all fine. Relax, it's all good."

Not entirely convinced that it was, in fact, good, Christine nevertheless allowed herself to be swept away by the crowd, offering no resistance whatsoever. According to Jamie, she just needed to drink some more and so Christine accepted the water bottle of red...something and drank it without protest. This was beginning to feel like a bad Lifetime movie, the one about binge drinking where the girl turned into a slut every time she had a beer, but Christine didn't think her situation was quite that dire, after all, she hadn't gone to bed with strangers. She'd just kissed classmates. But maybe meaningless kissing was a gateway drug in the realm of sluttery.

Maybe, she mused as she saw Sorelli sitting on Charlotte's lap, running her fingers tenderly through the other girl's wild curls, that was how _she _came by her reputation. One too many games of Make Out Jenga and then you spread your legs for anybody. Not that Christine actively disapproved of Sorelli's lifestyle, it just wasn't for her, but Sarah seemed to be having a great time, so who was she to judge? Long story short: she wasn't. So she was just going to drink her mystery cocktail, sit back and enjoy the ride.

As it turned out, Erik was actually better driving high than he was driving sober. The weed relaxed him to such a degree that he didn't shout at people who cut them off, nor did he tailgate slow drivers or honk or scream or stalk people who upset him on the road. And Ahmed had his cell phone, so he couldn't employ his favorite method of driving revenge: taking down someone's license plate number and calling the drunk driving hotline, claiming that they were swerving on the road and the police should be notified. That was just _dick_, but he did it anyway. Not tonight, however. Tonight he just laughed off bad drivers and waved and beeped at Trick or Treaters who looked in awe at the enormous yellow van meandering down their streets.

Tonight was a great night to do AA: it was dark, they had boas and night vision settings on their cameras AND it was the annual Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular at the park, so there was an extra element of jailtime to add to the thrill. In the end, they decided that they would split up, find a statue, dress it and take some photos, meet up and then head back to the house for more drinking, smoking and general debauchery.

It was not terribly well-organized, as far as divide and conquer missions went. People went off in groups of two, three, four and Erik was left to fend for himself with nothing but a cowboy hat, a feather boa and a dream. Whatever. His picture would be the _most _badass of _all_ the photos.

It wasn't long before Erik found the object of his desire: a man on a horse. A full sized statue of a man on a horse. The pinnacle of the statue world. Done. This was the only statue that needed to be conquered that night, that was it. The idea of putting a boa and a cowboy hat atop a pilgrim-looking fellow on horseback was too beautiful. Maybe the boa could go around the horse. Hmm. Things to ponder. Getting over the spiky fence around the statue was easy enough, Erik used his long legs to his advantage, but the base was just a bit too high to throw a leg onto and there wasn't quite enough room to wiggle on. It was then that Erik decided to save himself in a manner that would make Chester proud: with fashion.

Erik always wore a belt. Out of necessity, really. He wore his pants quite low, not quite so low that his underwear was visible, (that was tacky), but the waistband certainly sat closer to his hips than his natural waist. Some might have thought it was a fashion statement, a risque, devil-may-care commentary on society, but it had nothing to do with that and everything to do with the fact that Erik was really tall and most of his height could be found in his legs. It was hard to buy pants that fit without displaying an awkward amount of ankle, so he usually wore them low so that they would kind of, sort of reach a respectable length to the floor. More of a hassle than anything, today Erik was grateful for his too-long legs since the belt he was required to wear was going enable him to snap the perfect picture.

Going all Zorro on the statue's ass, Erik fashioned his thin leather belt into a crude lasso, tossing it over the bronze man's outstretched arm and dragging his bony butt up onto the base like an inexperienced mountain climber. It was a bit tricky actually dressing the statue and Erik had to toss the hat to get it onto the Puritan's head and the jump to the ground was slightly perilous, but the end result was a thing of beauty. Cocky and already envisioning the shock and awe that would surely be on the faces of his classmates when he returned with The Greatest Picture Ever Taken of Anything Ever, Erik wasn't too quiet as he dragged himself onto the statue, effortlessly blending into the darkness around him. It was enough to make a guy careless – well, not entirely careless, considering the fact that he was clinging to a statue for dear life, his toes the only thing on his body with sure footing. Alright, just snatch the cowboy hat and..._there_, time to go!

Or not.

The sound of voices froze Erik to the spot. For a moment, he just stood perilously on his perch, clinging to the cold bronze surface with all the strength in his skinny little fingers. Was that the police? It was getting dark out, but his chances of descending the statue and running for the hills without being caught were really not good. The voices rising up from the ground sounded very young, so he relaxed by increments since he was clearly not caught, but Erik still didn't think it was...well, _polite_ to descend into a private conversation.

"But I don't know why you want to call your brother...why can't we just go back to the party with everyone else?"

"Just...I'll tell you in a minute, you don't have to come if you don't want to..."

Especially not a private conversation between friends because Erik quickly realized exactly who the owners of those voices were: Raoul and Christine. "Shit," he swore quietly.

Not quietly enough.

"Did you hear something?" Christine asked fearfully.

"What? No," Raoul said, running a hand distractedly through his hair. "Um. Yeah, so I kind of wanted...kind of wanted to tell you something."

From above, Erik let out a barely-audible groan. Was he an unknowing eavesdropper on some kind of declaration of love? God, he might have made his peace with Raoul in the midst of the _Godspell _drama, but he really didn't want to listen to the guy's sickly-sweet romancing of Christine. He might vomit on both their heads and that would give him away more effectively than quiet swearing and minute shifting on the back of the statue ever could. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck _fuck_. This was probably one of the most awkward situations that he had ever been in to date and he was not enjoying the new experience. Hopefully they wouldn't try to fulfill their newly discovered passion beneath him because then he would have to take a flying leap from the statue and run for the hills. There were just some things people didn't need to see their friends doing.

"What is it?" Christine asked, since Raoul had evidently been silent for a long time while Erik was contemplating the least painful way to get out of this situation. "What? You can tell me, anything, really, are you okay?"

Raoul was silent for a while longer, then said something inaudible. Christine didn't have an easier time of hearing him ten feet below. "What? I'm sorry honey, I didn't hear you." It was probably sick, but Erik strained a bit to hear what Raoul was saying; God, Charlotte was right, he really was just such a creeper, wasn't he? Well, clearly Blondie Bear wasn't about to tell Christine she was hot and that he wanted to jump her bones, otherwise he would have blurted it out then and there, right? The direct approach seemed to be the best to take in that sort of situation.

Not that Erik had ever been in that sort of situation so he had no criteria by which to judge, but if he was in such a situation and had Raoul's good looks and sex appeal he certainly wouldn't beat around the bush if there was a lady he wanted to get to know better. So wrapped up was he in thinking about Raoul's imaginary sex life that he almost missed Raoul's comment about his _actual_ sex life.

"I think I might be gay."

This time, Erik was actually in serious danger of falling the treacherous ten feet from his perch. Whatever he was expecting to happen, he was _not _expecting that. Neither was Christine, apparently.

"Um..okay," she said hesitantly. "You...think you're gay? You don't...sorry, I'm not sure how that works."

Raoul let out some kind of frustrated sigh at that comment and replied with a slightly bombastic, "I don't _know_, that's the thing. I mean, I didn't _think_ I was and then...Monday night, with Erik -"

"Whoa!" she interrupted and Erik could imagine the look on her face, that deer-in-the-headlights, mouth wide open look she got whenever someone said something that she wasn't expecting. "Wait a minute, what did you and Erik do on Monday night?"

_What _did_ he and Erik do on Monday night?_ Because the Erik in question (and he _had_ to be the Erik in question, there were no other Eriks in Raoul's life on Monday) had no idea what happened to make Raoul question his sexuality. Yeah, he smoked that night – smoked a _lot_ that night, but he didn't drink (as usual), didn't pass out, definitely didn't hit his head and lose memories of doing something with Raoul that would involve him thinking that he might be gay after a lifetime of being attracted to girls.

"You saw," Raoul said, sounding slightly shocked that Christine did not remember bearing witness to this magical, sexual-orientation altering moment. Erik still was more shocked that _he _didn't remember either. "You were there. When we were playing Jenga."

It took Christine another moment to recall the exact incident and when she did, she was as confused as Erik was. Maybe not quite as confused as Erik was. Because all that happened during Jenga really wasn't much. "Well, I saw you guys kiss, but what else happened?" Christine asked, still believing that she was missing a piece to this intriguing puzzle.

"Yeah!" Raoul exclaimed, satisfied that she seemed to understand the source of his inner angst – and _still_ Erik wondered what the big deal was. His fingertips were numb, but he wasn't giving an inch. It would be beyond awkward for him to fall into their midst, in a conversation where they were talking about them and apparently the sexual feelings a kiss given during a party game had drawn up in Raoul. "I mean...he kissed me and it was just...he slipped me _tongue._"

Yeah, so? It wasn't like Erik was a stranger to weird party games (the Jenga set was partially _his_ after all), it wasn't like he'd never kissed a boy in public before and he usually slipped people tongue when he kissed them during a game, it was just...a thing. It didn't mean he was trying to turn Raoul gay. He certainly didn't have any kind of enzyme in his saliva that would turn a straight boy. It wasn't even a good kiss, as he recalled. Now, _Freddy_, he was a great kisser. Raoul's mouth was really, really dry. And why he remembered anything about the kiss other than the fact that it happened was a complete and utter mystery to him.

"Oh. Okay." Christine still didn't seem to quite get it and now Erik was hoping that Raoul would enlighten her and, by extension, him. You know. Before he registered them at Bed, Bath & Beyond and started scouting for an apartment they could rent together in The Castro. "So...you...I mean...wow. Sorry, I just...I didn't know – I didn't _think -_ Are you okay?"

"No!" Raoul said and Erik caught some wild gesturing he was doing out of the corner of his eye. He shifted his position very slightly on the statue, grateful that he had the ledge to stand on, knowing he was going to have some serious bruises in the morning. "No, I didn't even really...I hadn't even _thought _about guys and then he kissed me and now...I don't know."

"But...okay, so you never thought about guys, but you did think about girls?" Clearly, Christine was confused and at this moment, both she and Erik were equally in the dark.

"I did! I mean...I haven't...not really, like...I'm a _virgin_," he whispered, as though imparting some secret more terrible than the revelation of his latent homosexuality. "But I don't know, I thought I liked girls, I don't _not_ like girls, it's just...I don't know, it was a good kiss and now I'm confused!

"Okay." That seemed to be Christine's go-to word when she didn't know what else to say, but really she could convey a lot of emotion with that word. Right now the emotion was, 'So, why did you feel the need to come out to me in the middle of a park, at night?' Usually coming out standard among their group was a trip to the nearest Gregg's for cake. It was what they did for Armand in high school. They would have done the same for Raoul. Hell, if Erik was in a good enough mood, he might have given him another kiss if he was so turned on by the first one – okay, no, he shouldn't, he wouldn't and where had that particular thought come from?

"I just...needed to tell someone," Raoul said at last, probably turning those baby blues pathetically upon Christine. "And you're my best friend with these guys...like, my best friend period. I just feel like I could tell you whatever and you'd take me seriously. The others...they're great, but they don't take anything seriously. You take me seriously and I really appreciate that, I do and you're just the best." And then they were hugging and it looked like it was going to be a long hug.

Glancing once to the right and once to the left, Erik saw his opportunity. As silently as he was able, he placed the cowboy hat on his head and climbed down off the statue, over the fence and darted into the rather thick cluster of trees about ten feet behind him. Once he was sure he was out of their line of sight, he _ran_. Ran like a maniac, all the way back, through the cemetery to where the cars were parked and he didn't stop until he got to Ahmed's car. Reaching behind his ear, he found the joint he'd rolled earlier had mercifully not shaken loose in his fall. Though it was probably the worst idea of his life, Erik lit up and scrambled up to the roof of Ahmed's van, trying to catch his breath through the smoke and get his bearings.

What the fuck was that? He was just going to get a fucking hat off a fucking statue, why the _fuck_ did he have to hear that? About a month ago he decided that he would go with the flow and just _like_ Raoul, now all of a sudden, he gives the guy a hard-on? Since when? Since when did _he_ give people hard-ons? God, his head was swimming, he was smoking so fast that he was getting light-headed and he just wanted to go_ home_. Not his parents' home, back to the house with Ahmed and Freddy and they could just sit in the living room and watch _Mallrats_ and not give a shit about anything.

A buzzing in his pocket was the first tangible connection to the real world and Erik jumped, spluttering slightly and flipping his phone open. Unsurprisingly, it was Ahmed on the other line. God, his sense of timing was impeccable.

"_Dude! Where are you? Did the cops come? Where are Raoul and Christine?"_

Erik took a long, steadying breath, "Um. I'm at your car -"

"_You fucker! I was looking for you by the Temple of Music!"_

"Why would you look for me there? That's the first place the cops go looking for kids."

"_Because I'm stupid, apparently. Or I think like a cop. Whatever. Doesn't matter. Okay, I'll be at the van in, like, ten minutes, everyone else is on the way. What happened to Raoul and Christine?"_

"Um...I don't know. I think they took off or something. I think...I don't think they're going to meet us later. I think they're just going to go back to his house or he's going to drop her off at her room or...I don't know, I don't think they're coming."

"_Okay, fine. Are you cool with Armand spending the weekend with us?_ _Freddy promises not to have raucous sex."_

"Oh, right, like either of them have had sex yet. Um. Whatever, no, I don't care. Do you...want to order a pizza or something? When we get back?"

"_...is everything okay?"_

"Yeah everything's okay, why wouldn't everything be okay?"

"_Because you want to order food. You never want to order food."_

"Yeah, well, I'm hungry tonight."

"_You're smoking aren't you? On my _car_? What the hell is wrong with you! You're going to get caught."_

"No, I'm not. I'm done. No cops. Let's go home okay, go home, get a pizza. Relax. Please."

A long silence on the line. "_Okay, dude. Whatever you want."_


	38. My Junk

AN: Not really much to say about this chapter, so I won't waste time! Enjoy the inner turmoil!

**Googleeyes: **I'm glad you were surprised! I figured no one would be expecting that, but I hope it didn't come entirely out of nowhere. Raoul's just such an earnest little soul, he has to _share_ things, especially with his new BFF Christine.  
**Mominator: **Tee-hee! Glad it kept you laughing and not just scratching your head. I'm sure everything will work itself out in the end...not entirely sure how since I haven't written that yet, but you know. Somehow. Someday. Things will work themselves out.

* * *

_Well, you'll have to excuse me, I know it's so off.  
I love when you do stuff that's rude and so wrong  
I go up to my room, turn the stereo on,  
Shoot up some you, and the you is some song._

_I lie back just drifting and play out these scenes.  
I ride on the rush of all the hopes, and the dreams.  
I may be neglecting the things I should do,  
But we've all got our junk and my junk is you._

_-Spring Awakening_

Erik's mind and body were not working properly at 10:15am. He knew it was 10:15am because he'd been staring at his alarm clock for the past half hour, in a pointed daze. It was almost as if he felt that to move his body or change his position in the smallest degree would cause unutterable pain. No, to be perfectly honest, there was a definite danger of that. His head felt like lead, his tongue felt like it was coated in mothballs and his stomach felt like it had grown claws in the middle of the night and was trying to break free from his body John Hurt style. God, he felt _awful_ and to cap it off, he knew precisely why. As soon as they got into the van to return to the house, against his better judgement, he started drinking.

Christine and Raoul had opted to go their own way, he got a text from her that read only **'goin 2 raouls! happy halloween!1!'** Oh, how those exclamation points that could conceal so much. In any case, Erik curled up in the back of the van, alone but for an abandoned Poland Spring bottle filled with some unidentifiable red substance. Without giving a thought to the consequences of such mind-numbingly stupid actions, he drank the remainder of the bottle, wincing as it burned a path down his throat.

Erik never drank. Never. Once in a blue moon, he might have a sip off someone else's drink, just to see what all the fuss was about, to see what the taste was like, out of pure academic interest, but he never drank. It was bad for him. Not in a 'drinking is unhealthy' way, but in a 'your body will rebel and become a festering pustule of pain if you drink' kind of way. Normally he wasn't this fucking stupid, he just wasn't. Normally he listened to his doctors and did as he was told and even took his pills at the appropriate time in the morning. Not this morning. This morning those little orange bottles sat untouched in his medicine cabinet.

Never once before in his life had he had more than a dram of liquor and last night he...well he didn't remember how much he had to drink. Or what happened, exactly, it was all very vague. At one point he and Sorelli were both shirtless dancing to Lady Gaga's "Pokerface," and then he was making out with Armand, (who was also trashed) and toward the end of the night, the whole group of them decided to make cupcakes. That had gone about as well as could be expected and culminated in everyone eating cake batter and throwing frosting at one another.

The kitchen was a mess he knew and Ahmed would expect help cleaning it, but he'd already thrown up _twice_ since nine, (eight? with daylight savings?) and had dragged himself around on his hands and knees, scrubbing the bathroom tile as a result of that. One wouldn't think so, but Erik's sense of smell was more or less on par with the rest of humanity when it came to unpleasant odors and the scent of vomit always turned his stomach. Lucky for him, he had a number of surgical masks that he was expected to wear during cold and flu season. That never happened, of course, since walking around with a surgical mask in one's daily life looked _stupid_, but they served him well enough for scrubbing vomit off the floor.

Erik didn't even remember getting into _bed_, honestly. God, he hadn't fucked anyone, had he? That would be so embarrassing. Things were coming back to him now, hazy and disjointed, like a bad art house film. Once he'd finished with Armand, he sort of...rolled onto the floor near Meg who just kind of pounced on him and started playing with his hair. She was talking about something...something that seemed really important at the time. There had definitely been a long, involved conversation between the two of them, regarding the future and their mothers and then she cried because she'd never had a boyfriend....had he kissed her, then? It seemed like he'd done a lot of that last night, even though that was the very earth-shattering action that had gotten him worked into such a tizzy that he'd started drinking to begin with.

But no, he hadn't, because Jamie came over and she and Meg were kissing on top of him, which was completely strange and awkward, so he wiggled away and wound up back with Sorelli. Who still hadn't put her shirt back on and then she was taking her bra off and telling Erik that the whole time she was with Ahmed in high school, she'd really just wanted to date him and why not make up for lost time? But by that point he could hardly see straight and it was difficult to tell whether Sarah had two breasts or four. Further distracting him was the thought that, if she did have four boobs, that went a long way toward explaining her appeal to men. Sometime after that, the baking suggestion had been made.

That still didn't explain how he came to be in bed, dressed for sleeping. Had he really showered and gotten into his pajamas, removed the nose and all? It didn't seem likely. Yet here he was, relatively clean, in flannel PJ bottoms and a t-shirt, without any uncomfortably pieces of rubber and latex preventing him from trying to suffocate himself on the pillow. It was all too weird and he felt too sick to think about it anymore. That was when Erik decided to just stare blankly across the room and that was the position that his best friend found him in as he silently entered the room, apparently under the impression that Erik was still asleep. Ahmed was also precisely the reason that Erik was relatively clean and bed-ready, but he was never going to discover that little factoid, since Ahmed never planned on telling him. He hadn't even planned on engaging Erik in conversation that morning, but as he was passing the bed and noted that those yellowish eyes were wide open, it was too late to back out unnoticed.

"Oh, hey," Ahmed said uncomfortably, stopping halfway across the room. "I was just going to fix your clock."

The garbled groan from the bed was indecipherable to Ahmed who decided, screw the clock, he should probably be checking on Erik. "You had...um...a lot to drink last night. Like, for you."

"For anybody." Ah, there was speech. Clear, non-slurred speech. Speaking didn't do anything to ease his headache, but at least his stomach couldn't feel any worse. How much had he had to drink? The unidentifiable red stuff, two Tequila shots...Jack Daniels out of the bottle...Jesus, it was a damn good thing he wasn't supposed to drink, if he had free reign with booze, he'd be a full-blown alcoholic in a week. "Why didn't you stop me?"

Ahmed rolled his eyes at that, sitting on the side of the bed, not caring if his jostling disturbed the imaginary invalid. "What am I, your mom?" Bad analogy. Better to have asked, 'What am I, Chester?' Because Maddy would have probably been doing shots right alongside him. Actually, Ahmed did feel _really_ guilty about letting Erik drink the night before. Yes, he'd seen him doing shots in the kitchen with everyone else and, yes, he knew that he wasn't allowed to do that, but it hadn't seemed like a big deal at the time. Just sort of a vague, 'Huh. Erik's not supposed to drink,' but it never occurred to him to actually _stop_ him. Why? Well...he was high. He wasn't terribly responsible when he was high.

That was part of the reason he enjoyed smoking so much. Because Ahmed probably had some kind of undiagnosed anxiety disorder that made him feel like he had to be responsible for preventing all truly terrible decisions those around him wanted to make. Granted, he was not hyper-protective of all his friends, largely these feelings revolved around Erik entirely. Ever since they were little kids, he was the one getting on Erik to wear his jacket outside, put his hat on, wear sunscreen. He had to calm Erik down when he had his little freak-outs at school and physically held him back from getting into fights more times than he could count.

When Erik finally had a diagnosis for _why_ he was such a spaz, Ahmed was the one reminding Erik to take his meds and getting on his case when he was acting more crazy than usual. Yeah, it annoyed the fuck out of his friend, but Ahmed was one of the few people who could differentiate between general Erik weirdness and dangerous Erik weirdness. Someone had to, it had been a part of the dynamic of their friendship since forever and last night he dropped the ball royally. Hence the guilt.

Erik startled Ahmed from his reverie of shame by muttering something that the boy without the hangover had not caught. "Huh? Sorry, what?"

The pasty boy lying in bed rolled his eyes and repeated, slightly louder, "Can you get me some tonic water, please?"

It probably would have helped his stomach more to take actual quinine pills, but they were a bitch to obtain and the side-effects kind of sucked. So when he wished for relief from pain and suffering, Erik wound up taking what he could get, in the form of the negligible amounts in tonic water. In fact, he was pretty sure the relief was entirely psychosomatic at this point, but that didn't change the fact that he stockpiled cartons of the stuff in the basement.

And down into the basement Ahmed descended, returning to find Erik half falling out of bed, head buried in a wastepaper basket. Setting the bottle of the healing water beside the bed, he hovered uncertainly until Erik pulled his head out of the basket, a grim expression on his face. "Dry heaves," he reassured Ahmed, flopping back into his pillows. "Nothing came up."

Well, that was both good and bad, Ahmed thought. Good that the room wouldn't reek of vomit. Bad that Erik had only had two slices of pizza and some cake batter to eat yesterday. "Okay," he said, sitting back at the edge of the bed, cautiously, just in case Erik's body hadn't quite expelled the last of his pizza yet. "So...what's the story, morning glory?" Quoting _Bye Bye, Birdie_? Oh, yeah. He went there.

Erik was chugging down half a bottle of Canada Dry and couldn't answer right away. When he did, Ahmed was certain that he misheard. "Raoul's in love with me."

…

"Come again?" Ahmed asked, one dark brow rising dangerously close to his hairline.

Blowing out a breath through what passed for his nose, Erik rolled his eyes and lay on his back against his pillows. "Okay, maybe not in love with me. But he thinks he's gay. Because of me."

Yeah, so, despite the fact that Erik was talking and words were coming out of his mouth, they weren't making sense to Ahmed. Maybe it was the hangover from hell, fucking with his medication or something. Speaking of... "Did you take your meds this morning?"

"No." And at that, Ahmed was up and in the bathroom, shaking pills into his hand. Was it bad that he knew Erik's dosage? Probably. Dammit, he wasn't the guy's wife or mother or other female authority figure, why did taking care of Erik always fall to _him_?

"Okay, so what actually happened?"

Ahmed thought that maybe, just maybe, he would get a story of sense out of his friend. An account that had nothing to do with Raoul suddenly deciding he was gay with Erik as the protagonist in this saga of woe. No such luck. Erik related what happened when he was awkwardly clinging to the statue and Ahmed's eyes were the size of dinner plates. Yeah, Erik was a decent kisser, but he wasn't _that_ great. Certainly not so great that Ahmed ever thought of fucking him when he was sober. When he wasn't sober? Yeah, thoughts happen, he let Erik _drive _the night before, he never liked to let Erik drive and he just handed the keys over. People did and thought crazy things when they were under the influence and it was probably the same deal with Raoul and he told Erik as much.

"I hope so," Erik said, eyes locked on the ceiling. "I really fucking hope so. Because how awkward will this be? Going to class and thinking about him wanting to fuck me to see where he actually falls on the Kinsey Scale. And I thought he was straight. I really, really thought he was straight and my Gaydar is impeccable. And you know what the worst part of all this is?" There was dull horror in Erik's voice as he spoke. A resignation and sense of lost opportunities and hopes denied. It was a terrible thing to hear in one so young.

"The fact that you don't really like him that much?" Oh, it was so much worse than that.

"Well, there's that. But you know what? It really wasn't that great a picture. Of the statue, I mean. Like...I mean the statue was already wearing a hat. Two was just overkill. And a boa? I can do so much better than that. I was traumatized last night for a sub-par picture. That's really the most terrible irony of all."

"So..." Ahmed began, knowing he was venturing into dangerous territory. "There's no chance...you know, that you'd reciprocate?"

Even through his physical and emotional turmoil, Erik had the strength to turn to Ahmed and glare at him. "Let's not go there. You know better than to go there."

The green eyed boy sighed dramatically. Honestly, Erik was so sensitive about his own sexuality, you'd think he'd grown up Mormon rather than...however he'd grown up. There really wasn't a definition for it in the modern world. 'Blended Family' seemed to serve well enough. "Well, I mean, you've got to fuck someone _someday_."

"Yeah, and it's not going to be Raoul, thank you very much. He seems needy. Also he has a really pointy nose, have you noticed?"

Ahmed hadn't, actually, but he was willing to take Erik's word for it. He was a connoisseur of noses, after all. "So, are you planning on letting him down gently?"

Erik snorted loudly. "Um, I'm not planning on letting him down at all. This conversation does not leave this room. I am not fucking, kissing, touching or otherwise engaging in heavy petting with Raoul. Ever. We can just...play again and he can make out with Sorelli – that's it! We will get him drunk and he can fuck Sorelli and that will turn him straight."

"Or set him up for a lifetime of STDs."

"Yeah, well, there's that. But still. I don't think he's gay, I think he's a confused straight boy who wants to fit in. Didn't he go to some repressive Catholic school? Yeah, so he's obviously shocked by all of the rampant homosexuality that defines our lives and he thinks that, to fit in, he has to be bi-curious."

Ahmed was suitably impressed by this diagnosis. "Nice. Have you been going to therapy?"

Another loud snort. "Uh, no. David would just decide that all of this came from Raoul's resenting his parents. He thinks everything fucked up about me comes back to me resenting my parents. Which is why I don't go to therapy anymore. Do you want to leave my room now? I think I'm going back to sleep."

Ahmed didn't need to be told twice. Rising from the bed, he nudged the wastebasket closer to Erik with a small smile. "Just in case," he said. "Alright, sleep tight, dude. Try not to have too many Raoul-centric wet dreams." He ran out the door the second before Erik could throw a pillow at him. Behavior of that sort was almost enough to make Ahmed stop worrying about Erik. Almost, but not quite. Nothing was ever quite enough to make him stop worrying about Erik.


	39. We Need A Little Christmas

AN: Was being weird for anyone besides me lately? It wouldn't let me log in for a few days, made me very sad. This chapter was a bit of a struggle, parts of it seriously came to me sentence by sentence, it was like pulling teeth. It's been a rough week though, so that probably had something to do with it. Ah well, I'm afraid this chapter doesn't bring the funny like some of the previous ones and the story is going to take a bit of a down turn from here on out. There will still be witty dialogue and entirely too biased prose style (I hope), but the roller coaster of life will be on an upswing (eventually) for these happening cats. I mean, come on, this is a modern day Phantom story with sexuality drama, entirely too much weed and a Christine with an inner monologue that is entirely too loud, how dark can it get?

**Mominator:** I know, isn't that just the worst plan in the history of everything ever? For such clever boys, they really are remarkably dense sometimes. And yeah, the concept is a bit unconventional, but Raoul's just an adorable puppy dog! An adorable puppy dog who hasn't quite been housebroken yet, but he's _trying_, gosh darn it and he just wants to make everyone happy!

* * *

_Haul out the holly;  
Put up the tree before my spirit falls again.  
Fill up the stocking,  
I may be rushing things, but deck the halls again now.  
For we need a little Christmas  
Right this very minute,  
Candles in the window,  
Carols at the spinet.  
_

_Yes, we need a little Christmas  
Right this very minute.  
It hasn't snowed a single flurry,  
But Santa, dear, we're in a hurry!_

_-Mame_

November in Rhode Island dawned chilly and slightly gray, but with enough dull sunshine that to wear a winter coat outside would be overkill. Sober and ready to greet the day after a weekend of Halloween shenanigans gone wrong, three brave young collegiate souls climbed into Freddy's car to get to class, the bus having been deemed inappropriate for anything less than Very Important Outings, largely because Freddy's car got much better gas mileage.

"Hey, did you know Andrew Lloyd Weber was writing a new musical?" Freddy had been screwing around with Erik's iPhone in the backseat of his car while the owner of the phone drove his roommates to Memorial Rep.

The ride was now being conducted largely in silence. For a time, they discussed Raoul's change of sexuality and different ways to combat that. Freddy, naturally, offered to take the problem off of Erik's hands, just re-direct Raoul's sexual tension, but Erik vetoed that idea, convinced it would just cause more problems than it solved. Out of workable solutions, the conversation was now being turned toward whatever topic was lighting up the discussion boards at and Andrew Lloyd Weber's latest piece was all anyone seemed to want to talk about. Well, anyone who wasn't Erik Theroux.

"I choose to ignore anything that hack chooses to spend his time doing," Erik commented peevishly, white-knuckling the steering wheel. "It's not my job to save Andrew Lloyd Weber from himself."

"Even fucking Sarah Brightman?" Freddy asked deviously.

"_Especially _fucking Sarah Brightman."

For his part, Ahmed didn't see what was so creepy about Sarah Brightman. Was she weird looking? Yes. But to be likened to the crypt keeper was a little unfair, especially considering the fact that Erik was...well. Erik. Who was currently growling next to him in the driver's seat. Eyeing him nervously, Ahmed offered, "You want to pull over and have me drive? You sound stressed, dude."

"I'm _fine_," Erik insisted through his clenched teeth in a voice that indicated he was the furthest thing from 'fine.' "This Masshole won't stop riding my ass."

Turning around in his seat, Ahmed noticed that, yes, there was a Massachusetts driver who was tailgating them, even though they were going ten miles above the speed limit on a largely deserted main road. "Whatever," he said, rolling his eyes. "Just ignore him, we're fine, if he wants to break his neck and pass us, that's his business. Just keep your eyes on the road."

"It's a _sequel_ musical!" Freddy said, apparently not done with Lord Andy's latest bout of insanity.

"What to _Woman in White_?" Erik replied and Ahmed was grateful since he assumed that bitching about a sub-par composer would keep his mind off of sub-par drivers. "Yeah, because we all know how well that worked out for him."

"No, no, not _Woman in White_," Freddy said, squinting at the screen. "You take everything so seriously, Erik, you need to calm down. I mean, what do you need to show me on the CD where the bad composer touched you?"

"Freddy..." Erik said, having not yet unclenched his jaw. Three of his molars would have been loudly protesting this abuse, had they been gifted with voices with which to speak.

Freddy didn't get the hint and continued rambling, "I don't know, I don't hate him, I think he should retire, but – hang on, it's called _Love Never Dies _- "

"Whose love never dies? Rum Tum Tugger or some shit?"

"Oh my God, don't get your panties in a knot, hang on, I'm scrolling - " Mid-scroll, however, Erik hit a pot hole and sent the iPhone tumbling to the floor. "Dammit, Erik! Slow _down_, this is my car - "

"And that's my phone and if you cracked the screen, you owe me for it – dammit!"

Ahmed missed what Erik said after that exactly, though it was probably something like a muttered, "Alright, _fine_." It didn't really matter what Erik said because what Erik _did_ spoke volumes about his mood and frame of mind. Without any warning to Ahmed or Freddy, he slammed on the breaks, whipping his head around and snarling over the sound of squealing breaks, "Close enough _now_, motherfucker?"

The seatbelt was strangling him, so Ahmed couldn't quite express how fucking _stupid_ it was to stop short – in someone _else's_ car no less, but Freddy was doing all the talking for him. Shrieking technically, but why quibble?

"OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! HE COULD HAVE _HIT_ US! WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU _THINKING?_"

Sulking in the front seat, Erik just glared out the window as the other driver honked aggressively at them, having slammed his own breaks with even more force than Erik had, swerving to the left to avoid them. "He didn't," was the sullen response Freddy got.

"I don't fucking care!" Freddy shouted, wrestling with the seatbelt and getting out of the car. "Out! Out of the front seat! Get into the back of the fucking bus, Rosa Parks, I'm driving, you just LOST all driving privileges! Out! Get out of the seat!"

Erik just stared Freddy down when the curly haired boy wrenched the door open. "And if I don't?"

Ahmed had, by this time, finished assaulting his seatbelt and could speak and move about freely. "You don't have a choice," he said, unbuckling Erik and physically pushing him out of the seat as Freddy tugged on his left arm. "Seriously, you could have gotten us all _killed_, you fucking idiot, do what he says."

It was their good luck that Erik was so undernourished, he was easy to move against his will. Freddy actually overestimated how much force it would take to remove him from the vehicle and fell backwards into the street, Erik landing awkwardly on top of him. It would be comical if the situation wasn't so serious.

By some miracle, after his supreme attack of undying idiocy, Erik stopped fighting and permitted himself to be wrestled into the backseat, where he curled up, not bothering with a seatbelt. Neither of his friends were overly concerned with Erik's safety at this point, so they let it go and the remainder of the ride to acting class was conducted in stony silence.

The car made a sort of alarming squealing sound when Freddy pulled into a parking spot, but other than that, the car did not seem to have suffered any kind of permanent damage. Which was fortunate. If that had _not_ been the case, Freddy had seriously been contemplating shaving Erik's head while he slept. As it was, that did not appear to be necessary, but it was a very subdued trio that made their way into the main auditorium, not speaking, not touching, not even _looking_ at one another.

It would have been enough to make the other students uncomfortable, but they were already on the stage, standing around the piano, which Gaspard stopped playing as soon as he heard the auditorium doors open.

"You're late," he said, having the extraordinary skill of stating the blindingly obvious, but in such a way that you felt you were entirely at fault for _being_ so obvious in your actions.

"Car trouble," Ahmed replied, not even bothering to disguise his glare in Erik's direction. Gaspard did not let this pass unnoticed and only sighed lightly, understanding perfectly well what 'car trouble' and 'Erik' meant when the two terms were used in the same sentence.

"Hide the keys next time," Gaspard concluded grimly. Rolling up the sleeves of his sweater, he tapped the top of the upright piano impatiently and said, "Get your sheet music boys, assume the position. It's choir practice."

Erik's previous conduct may have shamed him into submission as regarded their tardiness and his questionable driving sanity, but he couldn't help himself when the issue of running the theatre came up. "...weren't we supposed to be doing scene showings today? Where's Tim?" Erik asked, not active _unhappy _about the change of plans since he was feeling a little too morose to stalk Christine with any pizazz, but it was a change of routine that he had not been informed of so, naturally, he wouldn't let them get on with class until he had answers.

But Gaspard wasn't just another of their typical professors. He had been busting Erik's musical ass since the kid was five and was not accustomed to taking any of the gangly (if unfairly talented) young man's shit. "Oh, you are in no position to be asking _any_ questions, my boy," he said, looking up at Erik over the tops of his tortoise-shell glasses. Running a hand over his head where his head used to be (teaching Erik convinced him he was doomed to lose his hair early, so he decided to get one up on male pattern baldness and just remove it himself), he threw the kid a bone and elaborated.

"Tim has some stuff to work on, so we're practicing for the Christmas show right now."

If Erik was like the other students, that explanation would have satisfied him, as it satisfied them. Too much to hope for, of course. With a furrowed brow, Erik sifted through the folder of music that he picked up. "Nothing from _Urinetown?_ That's strange." What he referenced was the long-standing tradition at the Christmas gala of picking songs from the upcoming season or year and giving the audience a bit of a preview, but as Erik flipped through the folder, he saw a number of standards from the 1940s, as well as typical crooner Christmas tunes. Nary a musical number from a musical they were actually doing in sight.

"Yeah, well, 'It's a Privilege to Pee' doesn't really say Happy Christmahanakwanzika to me – and if it does to you, then you have a problem too deep to rectify in the time alloted for this class." Poising his hands over the piano keys, Gaspard made it very clear that the conversation was over. "Are we done now? Are you going to take your place among the rabble, or do you have any other inquiries to make, oh my prince?"

"I'm done," Erik said dully, standing a foot away from the other boys in the back. Everyone was picking on him today and he didn't know why. So what if the Masshole smashed the back of Freddy's car, it would be _his_ fault, _his_ insurance...oh. Erik wasn't on the Richard's insurance plan. So maybe it _was_ a slightly bigger deal than he thought when he practically put his foot through the floor in his effort to scare the driver in the car behind him. None of that seemed particularly important now, he just felt really tired, like he wanted to nap, which was a sensation totally foreign to him since Erik did not nap. He was too neurotic to nap, unless he was sick, but he wasn't sick, he was fine, really, he just...made a really bad decision earlier. But that didn't make him sick. It certainly didn't mean that he needed a nap.

Letting his mind wander as Gaspard led them all through 'Carol of the Bells,' he reflected that it was probably a stupid thing to do, all things considered. What if the guy _had_ hit them? Insurance costs aside, they could have been seriously injured. And Freddy was in the back, he would have gotten the worst of it. Had Ahmed been wearing a seatbelt? The image of his friend smashing through the windshield gave Erik pause and he looked up from his music to steal a peek at Ahmed who was staring determinedly at the paper, the expression on his face somewhere between grim and worried.

One fortunate product of their impromptu driving adventure was that the question of what to do about Raoul's change of orientation was put completely out of his mind. At least until Gaspard gave the girls a break and started arranging the boys so they could sing 'The Longest Time' acapella. It did cross Erik's mind to tell Gaspard that Billy Joel didn't make him think of Christmahanakwanzika, but it didn't seem worth the effort.

Raoul, now on the periphery of Erik's consciousness, was suddenly thrust front and center when he was granted the solo portion of the song. Even then, he was nothing more to Erik than a musical note in a series of octaves. The song was familiar to the other boys who suffered dutifully through boys acapella rehearsals at seven in the morning in high school, but Raoul was having a bit of trouble – which was why he had been given the solo, he didn't have to worry about harmonizing as much. It seemed like a salvageable situation...until the revelation was made that Raoul did not know how to snap his fingers.

"Excuse me?" Gaspard asked, giving the blonde boy a somewhat blank expression. How could anyone be incapable of snapping? It was like being incapable of tying one's shoes. It just did not seem possible to get into college without possessing both of these life skills.

"I...um, yeah, I try, but I've never gotten the hang of it," Raoul demonstrated by rubbing his thumb and middle finger together, producing more of a dull 'thwack' sound than a genuine snap. "It's...um, yeah. It's a problem."

Nudging Ahmed, Erik rolled his eyes, nonverbally communicating, _Oh my god, isn't this kid a schmuck? Now you see why it's a problem for him to be in love with me?_

But Ahmed didn't respond to Erik's nonverbal signals. He just rubbed his arm where Erik's bony elbow had jabbed him and shifted a little to the left, out of arm's length, feigning total absorption in his music again.

Huh. Still pissed, and rightly so Erik was beginning to think. The weed would have to be on him this week.


	40. The Holly And The Ivy

AN: Oh my goodness, I'm SO sorry about taking so long to update! I'm dealing with some stuff right now, it sort of sapped my muses, but these are my unhappy Christmas chapters and I just needed to get them out before Christmas actually happened, so here you go, part one of the DRAMA. And I do mean DRAMA. There's really no explaining what's about to go down here, you're just going to have to read. I apologize for the lack of funny, but I did try to get a few amusing sentences in here and there. It's Christine, she's kind of a space cadet in any situation. Enjoy! Oh, and for anyone who thinks that Tim imported critters from the Land of Oz to help, the "munchkins" he refers to are a kind of doughnut hole sold by the box by Dunkin' Donuts, an East Coast breakfast staple.

**Mominator: **Teehee! Masshole is a fun term employed by bad Rhode Island drivers to describe equally bad drivers from Massachusetts, as you probably guessed from context clues. And yes, Erik is totally that guy that you leave on the side of the road when he gets too annoying. You don't leave him there for long, just long enough to make him worry that you won't come back.  
**Googleeyes:** Heh, I cannot take total credit for the combined holiday name, I don't know who came up with it, but I've heard it tossed around the interwebs and, yeah, it's basically awesome. And yes, as you may have guessed, Erik is not entirely stable and when he's in an agitated state of mind, it's pretty bad, definitely scary to be in that situation, so I cut Ahmed and Freddy a lot of slack for being REALLY pissed at him.

* * *

_The holly and the ivy,  
When they are both full grown  
Of all the trees that are in the wood  
The holly bears the crown.  
O the rising of the sun  
And the running of the deer  
The playing of the merry organ  
Sweet singing of the choir._

_The holly bears a berry  
As red as any blood  
And Mary bore sweet Jesus  
To do poor sinners good._

_-Sir Henry Walford Davies_

Christine, fortunately or unfortunately, remained ignorant of the debacle of Erik and the car. She simply assumed that he was having some kind of tiff with his roommates which was why he and Ahmed had not been spending so much time together. As far as Raoul's confession had gone...well, that was neither here nor there. On the one hand, he seemed to have determined that Christine was now his bestest friend, which was fine and all, she liked having friends. On the other hand, this meant that she was privy to Raoul's endless worries when Erik became more and more reticent in class over the coming weeks.

"Do you think it's me? Do you think he knows? Do you think he...you don't think he likes me, do you?"

She had absolutely no idea where Erik stood on the issue of Raoul and she had no chance to ask him. Not that she was terribly encouraged to have a heart-to-heart with Erik about Raoul's love life (especially since she had been sworn to secrecy), but even if she hadn't been, the fact was, Erik wasn't talking to her. Or anyone. He came to class late, sat in the back, glared and left early every day. Tim was frustrated, sure, but he wasn't spending a lot of face time in class either. Gaspard was taking over running mini-rehearsals for the gala and one day Chester even came in, looking less chipper than usual, and told them class was canceled, just go take a nap or something instead.

Christine couldn't help but feel somewhat abandoned. Erik had not even turned up for that class, but that was probably for the best, at least for him. It was a weird relationship limbo the who of them occupied. Yeah, Christine was pretty sure that they were friends, but they weren't the kind of friends who called one another every night to talk about what kind of day they had_._ Actually, they weren't really phone-conversation friends, they mostly texted and important or serious conversations could not be had over texts.

Truly, she'd tried, but after twelve hours of compulsively checking her phone, Christine resigned herself to the knowledge that no one would really respond to '**r u ok???**' with any degree of urgency. In the end, she hadn't bothered calling and when Erik skipped all his theatre classes again, she assumed he was just out sick and probably didn't feel like chatting at the moment.

The date for the holiday gala at Memorial Rep was drawing closer and closer and as a result, the students were being called upon to make time outside of class hours to rehearse and decorate at the theatre. The professors called this fulfilling mandatory lab hours, really it was a cheap way to hoist young, strong, thin bodies to the top of precarious ladders to hang lights and wreaths. It was the Saturday before Friday's big gala concert and all hands were to be on deck at 8am sharp. By 8:15 almost all hands were on deck and the complaining began in earnest.

"Ahmed, where the hell is Erik?" Tim asked, checking his wristwatch wearily.

Ahmed looked up sharply at that question, his eyes clouding. He hadn't been much more pleasant than Erik recently, sure he was there in class, but he wasn't making conversation with anyone, he didn't want to go out afterwards and was developing a tendency to snap at everyone if they asked him a question that was not class-related. Clearly he was suffering from end-of-the-semester stress, at least, that was what Christine thought. And hanging out with an assumed-sick Erik must not have been helping much.

"He's sick," Christine volunteered in an attempt to be helpful. She spoke the exact same moment as Ahmed, who mumbled, "Fuck if I know."

Belatedly registering the fact that Christine had spoken, Ahmed's face made expression that wasn't actually surly, which was a nice change from the week prior. "Is he?" he asked, both eyebrows climbing steadily toward his hairline. "You talked to him?"

Several sets of eyes settled upon upon Christine who instantly felt her cheeks flame red with embarrassment. "Well...no, not exactly, but he hasn't been in class in a few days, so...I just figured."

"Doesn't he live with you?" Sorelli asked Ahmed, taking a long sip from her iced coffee. "Or did you guys kick him out or something?"

"He kicked himself out," Freddy corrected her. "I mean, he hasn't been home in, like, four days. And he didn't even do the dishes before he left. Because he's a jackass."

"Okay, ladies and gentlemen, simmer down," Tim said, holding up a hand and sighing. Already he could feel the oncoming headache that was sure to make the rest of his day a living hell. "So, to clarify, Erik is not coming. Do we know where he _is?_"

"No," Christine and Ahmed said simultaneously and Ahmed added, "I figured he was just at his parents' place."

"I'll call Madeline later, then," Tim said, half to himself. "Right, well, those of you who _are_ here, thank you for coming, you will be rewarded through your GPAs. We have munchkins, help yourselves and I will be calling for lunch. You can expect to be here at least until four tonight, maybe later if necessary. We are not leaving until this place is covered in wreaths, garlands and all other holiday accoutrement."

Divide and conquer was the Timothy Reyer-Goldman approach to decorating. Setting the kids up in teams of two, Freddy and Christine were paired up and told to go into the prop storage closet and bring the boxes of garlands and ornaments upstairs to take a quick inventory. For her part, Christine didn't care what she had to do, as long as it wasn't setting up the fourteen-foot trees and tying them to the walls, she was happy. Ahmed and Sorelli got stuck with that job, apparently they were being punished for something.

It was a quiet few minutes of walking as duo made their way down to prop storage, evidently Freddy was still a little ticked about the previous mention of Erik. Oblivious to his plight, Christine decided to add insult to injury. "So...you haven't seen Erik in a few days?" she asked, tentatively opening the line of communication on that most dramatic of topics. The look her partner was shooting her told her a moment too late that broaching the subject right now was just not a good idea.

"He's a fucking shithead."

That particular comment didn't answer Christine's question at all and Freddy seemed to realize that since he elaborated a bit on that theme. "Okay, so I saw him on, like, Tuesday – Tuesday morning. And I had to get up fucking early on Tuesday morning, so I wake up and I hear this noise and it's like, it's not loud, but it's _there_ and I'm trying to sleep, so what the fuck? Anyway, I'm lying there, think what the hell is this noise and I have to pee anyway, so I get up and use the bathroom and I walk by Erik's room and that fucker is playing music at _five o'clock in the morning_. Not even playing music, he's writing his own damn music, so it's, like, fine for a few minutes then it gets bad, then he has to fix the bad stuff and did I mention it was _five in the fucking morning?_"

Clearly, Freddy needed the opportunity to vent. "Did you...tell him to knock it off?"

"Uh, yeah, I did," he replied, opening a door to their right that Christine was on the verge of walking past. After a bit of fumbling, he turned on the buzzing fluorescent lights that cast a dim glow over the enormous storage space. Squinting up, Freddy shook his head, "I need to talk to Jules, he has to get someone up here to replace these lights. Eurgh, what were we talking about?"

"Erik."

"Oh yeah. Well, yeah, I went in and I was like, 'What the fuck?' And he just _looked_ at me, like he didn't know what I was doing there and like _I_ was the one who was bothering _him_. I mean, really? _Really?_ And then he said he'd put his headphones on. And I told him to go to bed, but he didn't listen to me. I don't think he went to sleep at all, honestly, and then when I got back from work later in the afternoon, he left and his laptop and keyboard were gone from his room."

The whole story sounded kind of weird to Christine, but she didn't want to say anything. Had it been her in that situation, she would have panicked if Meg just took off for four days and no one knew where she was. Hell, when Sorelli went to random frat parties, she freaked out if she didn't hear from her all night, her overactive imagination conjuring up images of car accidents and date rape. Even so, Sorelli always texted or turned up eventually, maybe minus an article of clothing that she left the room wearing, but smiling and only slightly hungover.

A buzzing sound filled the awkward silence that settled between the two of them as Christine pondered the difference between male and female friendships and Freddy pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. "Dammit, it's the store," he announced, referring to their mutual place of employment. "Hang on, Christine, I've got to take this. You start looking, they keep the Christmas stuff in the back, behind the furniture."

Oh great, he was leaving her alone with the scary lights that needed to be replaced in a huge dark room where cobweb-covered snowmen waited with spindly limbs to drag her into their own personal Island of Misfit Actresses. Behind the furniture.

In an attempt to prove that she wasn't a complete pussy, Christine sucked it up and flipped open her own cell phone, hoping the bluish, radioactive light that emanated from the screen would be enough to scare away any bugs or possessed ornaments of the damned. Slowly, she walked past rows of chairs, tables stacked six high on top of each other, remnants of theatrical productions past. At last she found a series of boxes that wouldn't have looked out of place in any suburban basement, being crafted of dull brown cardboard with 'CHRISTMAS GARLANDS W/LIGHTS' scrawled on their sides in black marker. Those boxes were stacked fairly high, but there were a few scattered around on the floor that Christine found much more accessible for her vertically challenged self and she knelt down to examine the one closest to her.

An enormous sneeze chose to burst from Christine's nose at that moment, spraying the top of the dusty box with snot and saliva. "Ew," she sighed, wiping her nose off with her sleeve. Hey, she was alone, right? Who was going to see her being gross?

"Huh. I've never really had that problem."

Hearing a voice sounding in the darkness would startle anyone who thought they were alone. Hearing a voice from the darkness of a prop room, with lots of dark corners, dust and various nooks and crannies for unholy creatures of the night to hide? Fucking terrifying.

"Fuck!" Christine exclaimed, toppling backwards and landing on her bum in the dust.

A dark chuckle that sounded a little wheezy drifted out over the boxes and chairs and tables. "Boo."

Well, it didn't take a genius to figure out who was currently amusing himself by scaring the crap out of her. "Erik?" Christine asked incredulously, squinting into the darkness, not bothering with the cell phone this time since it really didn't help as much as she thought it would. "Tim's looking for you – or did you see him already? Where _are_ you, anyway?"

"Look up."

She did and upon doing so saw Erik sitting on top of a stack of tables she would _swear_ had been devoid of human habitation when she walked by not a minute ago. Maybe he'd hopped up when she sneezed. "Oh hi," Christine said sweetly, smiling up at Erik. She couldn't quite see his face, since the lighting was so bad, but she figured it was up there somewhere.

"Hi, yourself," he answered, rubbing his right hand over his face briefly. For one weird second, Christine thought that he seemed to be checking to make sure his face was on alright, but why would anyone need to do that? The dust was clearly eating her brain cells. Huh. Zombie dust. The one thing she hadn't prepared for. "What are you doing here?"

"Getting boxes for Tim," she replied.

"What, you're working extra hours being a gopher?"

Christine giggled. "No, I'm getting stuff to decorate upstairs."

There was a moment of genuinely shocked silence before Erik asked, slightly rhetorically, "Uh, that's today?"

Half-convinced he was kidding, the dusty blonde girl rolled her eyes, "Uh, duh. Meg's only been bitching about it for two weeks now." The other girl claimed that this was the most dangerous day of the year. Being that she was short, she often had to stand on ladders to hang ornaments and wreaths, which could result in her falling to her death at any time. Even Christine thought that was being a little extreme.

"Huh." Another moment of silence, then Erik asked, "What day is it?"

This whole conversation was beginning to feel less and less like a joke. "Um. Saturday. The twelfth. Are you feeling okay?"

"Do you have any cash?"

Yeah. Most definitely _not_ funny anymore. "Excuse me?" Christine asked, feeling oddly vulnerable now on the floor. To combat this feeling, she got up, and doing so got a clearer, slightly more startling view of Erik's face.

Her friend was _creepily_ pale and she noticed a very slight tremor in his hands as he moved to grip the front of the table he was sitting on. There were dark circles under his eyes and in the dim, when his eyes were closed, it looked as though he just had bottomless sockets in his head. "Never mind," he muttered, folding his arms across his chest, then unfolding them, then folding them again, then hopping off the table abruptly to stand in front of her. Christine couldn't help but jump back, she really couldn't, though at least this time she was saved the indignity of landing on her ass again. "Never mind," he repeated, as if he already forgot what he was saying as he said it. "I'll see you."

"Wait a minute," she said abruptly, recovering herself to follow Erik as he walked around the table. "Are you okay? You don't...look okay."

"I never have," was his cryptic response. This encounter was growing creepier and creepier by the second and every creepy second was accompanied, for Christine, by a strong feeling that she should _not_ let Erik just walk out of prop storage without making an effort to stop him.

"Um, okay, I don't know what that means, but I don't think you should just...where are you going?"

"Nowhere."

Nearly jogging to keep up with Erik's long, meandering strides, Christine lay a restraining hand on Erik's arm, "Wait, do you want me to call your mom, or - "

Far more quickly than she anticipated, Erik pulled away from his friend's well-intentioned touch and then had her wrist enveloped in one of his bony, long-fingered hands. Now he was far closer to her face and she could see his eyes, dry and red burning into hers. "Get your fucking hands off me, you nosy little bitch. What I do with my time is none of your fucking business, you understand?"

And with that, he shoved her away from him. Had it not been for the table she grabbed to steady herself, Christine would have fallen to the ground. Even after Erik disappeared into the stacks of old, unused props, she found her legs shaking and eyes burning with tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks. Never, not in months of friendship, had Erik ever said _anything_ like that to her. Abrupt? Yeah, he could be abrupt and tactless and...kind of a jerk, if she was honest, but he could also be funny and sweet and he was always so nice to her. What had she done to upset him?

Nothing, she realized, becoming angry beneath her hurt and confusion. She hadn't done anything to deserve that. Looking down at her wrist, she felt the phantom pressure of his fingers on her skin. It hadn't hurt _that_ badly, it wouldn't leave a mark. He hadn't grabbed her hard enough to hurt her, just enough to scare her. Again, the thought pissed her off. Who did he think he was? Weren't they supposed to be friends? Now she understood why he seemed to be at odds with everyone all the time, was this how he acted with people once they got used to him? Just...called them bitches and told them to leave him alone when they were worried.

Freddy's earlier assessment of 'fucking shithead' now seemed entirely accurate. Christine was still leaning on the table, staring uncomprehendingly into the air in front of her when Freddy returned a few minutes later. "Sorry to abandon you, hun, there was some kind of chai emergency, but don't worry, it's all - " he stopped talking when he took in the look on Christine's face. "Whoa. You okay? You look like you saw a ghost."

"No," Christine said shakily. "There was no ghost. There was only Erik."


	41. Down Once More

AN: Okay, guys, this is not a happy chapter. Sorry, there's very little to laugh at here and there won't be much funny coming in the next chapter either. I swear things will get better, but Erik is dealing with a very serious medical condition, which can, occasionally, if it isn't managed properly, be very dangerous for people who have it. I hope I don't offend anyone who deals with mental illness, either their own or knowing someone who does.

**Googleeyes: **Ah, yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Strange and Phantomy and not in a good way. Too often in fic, I think, people can overlook the fact that Erik, as much as we love him, does have some serious issues. And even the most ardent E/C shipper can understand that he can be a _scary_ guy sometimes. I didn't want to gloss that over in my story.  
**Mominator: **Thanks for the good wishes. Things are okay, just some stress that, weirdly, has nothing to do with the holidays! No mutant snowmen in this chapter, sadly, though we do have plenty of Christine's overactive imagination on display.

* * *

_Down once more to the dungeon of my black despair!  
Down we plunge to the prison of my mind!  
Down that path into darkness deep as hell!  
Why, you ask, was I bound and chained in this cold and dismal place?  
Not for any mortal sin, but the wickedness of my abhorrent face!_

_Hounded out by everyone!  
Met with hatred everywhere!  
No kind word from anyone!  
No compassion anywhere!  
Christine, Christine ...  
Why, why ...?_

_-The Phantom of the Opera_

Naturally, Freddy could not let the conversation simply end there, he demanded specifics rather than cryptic vagaries. She had _seen_ Erik? Honestly _seen _him? Oh yeah, she was quick to assure him. Not only had she seen him, she had been physically assaulted and sworn at by him. Christine indicated the direction in which Erik had disappeared and Freddy went after him like a brave little toaster, but the other boy was long gone.

"We have to tell Tim," Freddy concluded grimly as he jogged up to Christine, their task of retrieving Christmas ornaments all but forgotten. "I mean, keeping me up all night is one thing, but grabbing you is just not okay." The slightly traumatized blonde girl nodded mutely, still rubbing her wrist compulsively even though it had ceased actively hurting. It wasn't much of an intellectual struggle, she knew that she had to tell someone, if not for her sake, then for Erik's since there was obviously something _seriously_ fucked up about him at the moment. And yet she couldn't help this niggling feeling in the back of her mind that she didn't want him to get in trouble. Any Women's Studies major worth her salt would probably tar and feather her for perpetuating the cycle of violence, but her heart was having difficulty computing what her brain knew had just happened.

It was so...random. Yeah, Erik was kind of an asshole, but he'd never shown signs of violence before that she could recall. Then again, did she really know him well? Not particularly. It was equal parts scary, disheartening and just plain awful to think that the Erik she'd been getting to know for months was just some front and he was actually just this abusive creep. Freddy wasn't doing anything to reassure her that this was something out of the ordinary, he was muttering to himself under his breath as they climbed back up the lobby. Christine couldn't really make out what he was saying, but she did catch snippets here and there, mostly things like, "I'm going to _kill_ the bastard," which didn't make her feel very good about Freddy's emotional stability either.

Tim wasn't easy to track down, Freddy grabbed Ahmed first, dragging him into a corner and talking with him in a hushed tone. Every so often he would cast a significant look over his shoulder at Christine who stood alone, awkwardly wringing her hands. Then he would gesticulate wildly to better get his point across. The longer they spoke, the more worried Ahmed look until finally he just nodded grimly and joined him in the search for Tim. They found him in his office – rather, they found him coming out of his office, clutching a cell phone with a peculiar look on his face.

Oddly, he didn't seem remotely surprised to see them wandering in the 'Staff Only' area of the theatre. In fact, he didn't seem to realize that Freddy and Christine were even there since he locked eyes with Ahmed and said, "Madeline and Charlie haven't seen Erik in a week."

"Christine just did," Ahmed replied without an instant of hesitation. "He was downstairs in prop storage and he was acting...just ask her."

Nervous now that all eyes were on her, Christine explained what had just transpired with a minimal amount of stuttering. Tim asked to see her wrist for injuries, but there wasn't anything to show, no bruises, just a very shaken teenage girl. "Christine, I think you should go home, did you drive here with someone?"

"I came up with Meg and Sarah, in Sorelli's car," she said and Tim nodded.

"Okay, I give all you girls permission to go back to your room, you can go, we can deal with decorating some other time." And with that, it was as though she disappeared from his consciousness, Tim was all business and apparently his business was going to be conducted with Freddy and Ahmed. "You two boys can tell everyone else to go home, I'm going to pick up Madeline and...we'll see."

What they would 'see,' Christine didn't understand. She didn't understand what was going on at all, it was like her life was playing before her independent movie style, a series of vaguely connected images that she wasn't a part of at all. In a mild daze she allowed herself to be herded downstairs and just stared at the floor as Ahmed related the details to Sorelli, who didn't quite understand the situation.

"Hang on, so we're not decorating because Erik's...lurking in the basement? That's retarded, why do we care if he's blowing us off?"

Ahmed ran a hand through his hair, clearly not up for dealing with this shit. "It's not that simple, Erik's...kinda having an episode, I figure. Everyone just needs to clear out 'til we find him."

One of Sorelli's sleek, dark brows rose questioningly, "Find him? Can't you just call him?"

"His phone is off," Freddy said flatly. "I tried twice and no one's seen him – except poor Christine – in half a week. So, yeah, the situation is _bad_."

The 'poor Christine' comment caused the girl referenced to look up and frown slightly. Okay, she wasn't a helpless _victim_ here, it wasn't like she was some gothic heroine that Erik locked in the basement had had his way with. She was just a girl who got treated like shit for two seconds by someone who was obviously fucked up. Was it drugs? She knew he smoked pot, but had no idea that he was into hard drugs. Maybe this was like that after school special with Helen Hunt when she took PCP and threw herself out a window. Some of Christine's righteous indignation was fading and she was seriously worried for Erik, if he was OD ing or something, he needed help and he needed it fast. "Let's just go," she said impatiently to Sorelli. "I mean, it's not like you want to be here anyway."

"Good point," the other girl said, slinging her purse over her shoulder and digging out her car keys. "Fine, I'll call Meg, then we'll bounce."

And bounce they did. Meg grilled Christine for information pertaining to the Erik hit-and-run, as she termed it, but Christine really didn't want to talk about it. In fact, she didn't talk for another few hours, she sat on her bed, listlessly trying to finish an essay for her English class, giving up when she couldn't concentrate enough to write anything for her final paragraph beyond, 'In conclusion,' which she knew was a terrible way to conclude an essay. By five o'clock, it was dark outside and she was hungry, though still worried about Erik and what was going on back at Memorial.

Biting the bullet, she reached under her bed and dug around in her purse which had been abandoned to the dust bunnies when she made it back to her room...and no cell phone. Confused, Christine dumped the contents of the purse on her bed and went through it. Wallet, movie ticket stubs, keys, more keys, receipts from the gas station, the coffee shop, the burger place on campus...no phone. Had she put it in her backpack? Unlikely, since she was more than usually paranoid about it being crushed by the weight of her books, but Christine looked anyway, digging through every over priced textbook, her notebooks and stray pieces of paper that she had collected throughout the course of the semester. Not there either.

Turning her thoughts back to that afternoon, she tried to remember what she had done with her phone after using it as a flashlight. She flipped it shut...and...and...maybe put it on the floor next to her when she went to open the garland box. Maybe, she couldn't quite recall, she had been too busy being really freaked out to remember where she'd deposited her phone.

All of a sudden, Christine was startled from her reverie by a knock on the door. "Hey, Christine? It's Raoul, Meg told me you were in here. You want to go to dinner? My treat?"

Much to her surprise, Christine actually felt relief associated with Raoul's arrival. He was so sweet and so different from the others who were in the theatre program. They were unpredictable and jaded and weird and Raoul was nice. That was the best thing about him, he was a genuinely nice person, the most shocking, unexpected thing about him had been his Halloween confession and, really, what theatre boy didn't find himself a little bi-curious at least once in his life? The mystery and cool factor of Erik was totally trumped in her brain now by Raoul's constancy and eternal good will.

Yeah, maybe she was building him up in her mind a bit after the afternoon's unfortunate run-in, but Christine felt that she had a pass on that one. With a smile she called out, "Yeah, sure, just a minute," and put everything back in her purse before letting Raoul in.

"Sorry for just turning up," he said, flashing an apologetic grin at her. "I called you, but you didn't answer, that's when I tried Meg."

"Yeah, sorry, I think I left my phone at Memorial," Christine explained, shrugging as if it was no big deal. Lucky for her, Raoul was such a good guy that he didn't need a display of theatrics to sympathize with her.

"Oh, that sucks. You want to go pick it up?" he offered generously, twirling his keys absently around his fingers. "I don't mind driving to Providence, the food is better on that end of the state anyway."

See? This was why she loved Raoul, he was totally cool and there was never this ambiguous expectation that she had to be more than she was or that he was going to tease her for being absentminded. He was really a guy she could see herself liking long-term. There was only the problem of his suddenly ambiguous sexuality, but maybe...maybe if he knew how much of a loser Erik could be, his attraction, or whatever he felt toward the other boy, would lessen. As a good friend, she should probably tell Raoul that Erik was shooting up heroin or whatever made him turn into such a freak, right?

No, Christine realized as soon as the thought popped into her head. Clearly, Erik had a serious problem and it wasn't her business to tell Raoul or spread rumors or anything. The best she could do was shut up and hope that Erik got the rehab he so desperately needed. As the streetlights sped by, Christine started thinking of the long-term consequences of Erik being in rehab. The Christmas show would totally be out. Would the boys be able to do the a capella songs they had planned without him? Would they just broadcast the show live from Betty Ford? If he did go to Betty Ford, would he be able to get her Lindsay Lohan's autograph?

Okay, that wasn't actually a primary concern, that was just a thought for when he was weaned off the crystal meth and needed something to do. Raoul broke the long silence that had fallen over the car as they neared Memorial and Christine let her imagination get carried away with her, by asking, "I hope they're still open, they might have shut down because of the heat."

"The heat?" Christine asked confusedly, wondering if maybe Raoul had been talking this whole time and she was in the dark because she hadn't been paying one iota of attention.

"Yeah," he nodded, putting on his turning signal and parallel-parking crookedly beside a defunct parking meter. "That's why we got to leave early, remember? The heat was fucked up and Tim didn't want us to freeze."

It probably would have been wise for her to shut up and assume that there was some big conspiracy to cover up Erik's unexpected acid trip. It would have been better for her to nod, pretend that she had been fed the same story as Raoul. But Christine was a good, honest girl and lying was just not her default mode, even lies of omission. "Who told you that?"

"Uh...Armand, I think," Raoul said, getting out of the car. "Yeah, it was a little bit rushed, I was happy to get out of there, I got to bed late last night. Why, didn't they tell you why we left?"

"Uh...no, no one told me why we were leaving," she replied. Technically, this was true, no one _told_ her why they were leaving, she just _knew_. Christine decided to let well enough alone and just shoved her hands into her pockets as they made their way up to the doors to lobby. Though all the lights were blazing inside, the doors were locked. Annoyed, Christine frowned at the doors. Come on, they drove for twenty minutes to get there, what if her dad called? He would be _so_ pissed if she lost the phone, it was new, just purchased the school year, a going-away-to-college present from him and Val.

"We could try the side door," Raoul suggested, taking note of the crestfallen expression on Christine's face. Lo and behold, his suggestion paid off, the staff entrance by the box office was open, even though the heavy metal door seemed to have frozen a bit during the day and took a bit of doing to ease open. There were no performances this weekend, so the box office was empty and the lobby was similarly deserted. Surely _someone_ was around since the theatre wasn't dark and locked for the evening, but there were no murmured voices down the corridor and the air was still, devoid of squeaking shoes making their way across the tiled floors.

Slightly weirded out by the silence and loneliness of the place, Christine nevertheless led the way into the prop storage room, Raoul following closely on her heels. Prop storage was just as disturbing as she remembered it to be and evidently no one had tended to the dying light bulbs as of yet. If anything, it seemed darker than she remembered and Christine bumped into several odds and ends that were scattered about, including one large window that apparently used to be part of a fairly elaborate set; there were still intact panes of glass in the frame.

"Wow, it's creepy down here," Raoul observed.

"_Right?_" Christine asked, rhetorically, looking over her shoulder at Raoul with wide eyes. "And Freddy left me all alone down here before, can you imagine? I wouldn't leave someone all alone down here, I wouldn't _pay_ someone to come down here – ha! Here's my phone!"

"Sweet!" Raoul exclaimed. "Alright, now we dine! I was thinking, there's this place called Rick's Roadhouse, apparently they've got, like, the most amazing pulled pork nachos ever, do you - "

But whatever Raoul was going to say was interrupted by a loud crash across the room and subsequent screaming, "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!"

Raoul and Christine both nearly jumped out of their skins. "What the fuck?! Raoul shouted while Christine just yelped in a strangled, frightened way. The screams across the room subsided, but a compulsive, fast muttering, words they couldn't make out, but the voice was distinctive enough. "Is that Erik?" Raoul asked incredulously, looking at Christine for confirmation, but his friend was shrinking away, eyes darting toward the door.

Oh, holy crap, Erik was still around and apparently his bender had gotten worse. "Oh, shit we need to leave," Christine said, by way of a response.

"What?" Raoul asked, looking at Christine as though she was the crazy one. "We can't leave, he's our friend, he might be hurt - "

Another crash, more swearing and this time Erik did stumble into view. He was hurt, that much was clear. Apparently he stumbled into something sharp, maybe he hit the window that Christine had bumped into earlier. He was weaving as though drunk, holding himself up against a bureau with one skinny arm that was...wet? It wasn't raining outside. Only a moment later Christine registered that the slick liquid glinting off of Erik's arms and trickling down his face was blood.

"Motherfuckers," he swore, out of breath and panting a bit as he looked down at Raoul and Christine. "Out of my business, I _told_ you assholes to stay out of my business, don't you _fucking listen?!_"

"S-sorry," Christine stuttered, being the first of the two of them to recover from the shock. "Um. We were leaving. We'll just leave now." Inside, her heart and mind were racing and all she could think was, _Need to get out, need to call Tim, need to get out, just get to the door, hope he doesn't follow, just GET OUT_.

"Leave?" Erik asked, his voice was hoarse, probably from all the screaming and his face looked...weird. Like he'd broken his nose only...not. "Yeah, right, everyone leaves they all leave eventually get sick of me, too much trouble, and you know, I told them, I fucking _told_ them, but does anyone listen to me? Fuck no. Too busy. Not busy. I was busy, I did a lot of crap this week, lot of crap and it's nothing because you're all going to go off and leave and have brilliant fucking lives and fuck _you _Raoul, for fucking up your perfect life because you don't have enough drama. This enough, drama for you, you stupid fuck?"

Both Christine and Raoul had been too busy freaking out to take much stock of what Erik was doing with his hands, but the pair of them ducked when some unidentifiable something was lobbed at them, though whatever it was missed them by a good margin and landed against the concrete floor with a dull thud. It was only a lamp, a table lamp, plastic, not very heavy and lacking a shade, but the innocuous projectile didn't make the situation seem any less dire.

"Jesus Christ!" Raoul shouted, instinctively throwing himself half in front of, half over Christine, blocking her from Erik's path even as he tried to stumble the pair of them to the door. "You stay right the fuck over there, Erik, I swear to God, I will call the _cops_ if you don't calm down!"

"Cops?" Erik asked, head bobbing up like a dog who'd heard a loud sound in the distance. "Cops. Good. Good. Call. Call. Not like I'm doing anything for the rest of my life. Not like it..." Erik stumbled forward, but tripped, landing hard on his hands. It was hard to tell with the lights, but it looked like something flew off him. With a muffled scream, Erik brought a hand to his face – had he broken his nose on the floor? Christine and Raoul didn't stick around to find out. As Erik groped manically in the darkness behind him, they ran. Out the doors, up the stairs, higher and higher until they flew into the brightly lit lobby that wasn't unoccupied anymore.

Ahmed met them as they made a beeline to the doors, forgetting entirely they were locked, but neither Christine nor Raoul noticed he was there. It was like something out of a horror movie, the two of them pushed and banged on the door, trying to leave and then someone yelled, "Hey!" behind them and Christine screamed again. "Guys, chill, it's just me!"

This time they turned and saw the tall, dark-haired boy who was _not_ screaming at them, _not_ bleeding and _not_ throwing things. "Your friend is fucking crazy!" Raoul declared passionately, blue eyes darting nervously around the lobby as though expecting Erik to drop in from the ceiling. When Erik had gone from being 'our friend' to Ahmed's friend alone was unclear. Probably about the time he called Raoul an asshole. Or threw the lamp. "What the fuck is wrong with him?"

The expression on Ahmed's face changed rapidly, from bewilderment to momentary anger to, finally, horrified resignation. "He is here. Thank fucking Christ, I thought...never mind. Erik has bipolar disorder and the fucker hasn't been taking his meds," he said through gritted teeth. It was clearly difficult for Ahmed to talk about this, whether he was more furious or scared was impossible to tell. "I went back to the house today...he's got, like, a month's worth of pills in the bathroom and he didn't refill his prescriptions."

Christine heard the words, but she really did not understand. "So...what, he's crazy now? Because he's not on his medicine?" She was shaking uncontrollably and her the pressure and stinging in her eyes was an indication that she was not far from tears.

Running a hand through his hair impatiently, Ahmed sighed, "He's having an episode, that's what they call it, he's...yeah, his brain is all fucked up. Tim and his mom and dad are looking for him, they didn't think he woulds stick around here - "

"Well, he _did_!" Raoul said emphatically. "And he's downstairs and bleeding and freaking out, I almost called the police."

"Should I call 911?" Christine asked, sweaty, fumbling hands struggling to pull her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans where she deposited it earlier.

"No!" Ahmed shouted, physically removing the phone from Christine's trembling hands with a force that made her wince as tears trickled down her cheeks. "No. Just...no. I don't want an ambulance coming, it'll just freak him out more."

"But he needs to get to the hospital!" Raoul yelled right back, getting over the shock of the ordeal and beginning to genuinely panic.

"No _shit _he has to get to the hospital," Ahmed shot back, hand going through his already wild black hair. "But not in an ambulance, not with a big fucking production. He needs to calm down _first_ and then we'll get him stitches or something – or I will, lock the door on your way out. I'm going after him, we've wasted too much time already."


	42. Don't Do Sadness

AN: Again, I'm sorry guys, this is not a nice chapter, definitely deserves the 'M' rating I tacked onto this fic, as far as I'm concerned. I'll warn you right now, if blood and rage and serious depression is something you don't want to read about right now, it would be better to wait until the next chapter is posted to catch up with everyone. This one is pretty awful, I almost feel bad to have written it. I will say, I did crank out the last few chapters quickly so we can resume our regularly scheduled programming. So yeah, in the interest of brevity, I will only say: ANGST! FULL SPEED AHEAD!

* * *

_Awful sweet to be a little butterfly  
Just winging over things and nothing deep inside.  
Nothing going going wild in you, you know,  
You're slowing by the riverside or floating high and blue.  
Or maybe cool to be a little summer wind,  
Like, once through everything and then away again.  
With the taste of dust in your mouth all day,__  
But no need to know.  
Like sadness, you just sail away._

_Cause you know, I don't do sadness,  
Not even a little bit.  
Just don't need it in my life, don't want any part of it.  
I don't do sadness, hey, I've done my time.  
Looking back on it all, then it blows my mind.  
I don't do sadness, so been there.  
Don't do sadness, just don't care._

_-Spring Awakening_

Once Christine and Raoul were safely gone away in their car, Ahmed's search for Erik began in earnest. Call it a hunch, but he didn't think that Erik left Memorial at all that afternoon, which was why he was here at all, rather than driving slowly up and down the streets of Providence looking for him. Their classmates had last seen him in prop storage, so it was from prop storage that Ahmed decided to begin his systematic scouring of the theatre.

Cursing Tim for not having the lights in prop storage fixed, Ahmed unknowingly echoed Christine's actions from earlier, taking his cell phone out of his pocket and shining it into the little nooks and crannies searching for his friend. To Ahmed's horror, Erik was not the only living critter on the lower levels that night; he saw a rat scurry under a pile of plates in a corner and promptly screamed like a girl, sending his phone clattering to the floor. It seemed that God did not totally hate him this evening since his screen was not even cracked when he lifted it from the ground and thus reassured, he resumed the search. Ahmed's arm was going to get tired from holding the phone eye-level, but it cast a wider arc of light if he held it aloft, so he persisted in that style until he hit pay dirt: a reddish-brown smudge on an otherwise clean table top.

Ahmed's stomach turned a bit when he saw this evidence of bleeding that Raoul had mentioned earlier. _Fucking hell, Erik, why did you let it get this bad? _That wasn't something he wondered for very long. As awful as this was Ahmed knew Erik never _meant_ for it to get this bad, it just did. That was why all his anger that built up over the course of the morning had all but dissipated by now.

Another smear of blood was on the door leading to the back staircase, the dingy old metal one that no one used anymore. Ahmed didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what direction Erik had travelled and so he followed that staircase, higher, higher, higher until he got dizzy from climbing and found himself in front of a long metal ladder. The blood spatters continued on up the rungs and Ahmed sighed and climbed up himself, grunting with the effort that came with pushing the heavy metal door to the roof level open.

With a grunt of effort he hoisted himself onto the roof, wondering how the hell Erik managed to get his skinny ass up there, considering the fact that he hadn't eaten anything in God knows how long. The roof was fucking freezing and Ahmed lamented the fact that he was just wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, having chosen his wardrobe based on the assumption that he would be hanging lights all day, not chasing his friends around on rooftops.

For a long, terrible moment, Ahmed thought he was on a wild goose chase; if Erik had been to the roof, he wasn't there now. Then, suddenly, movement to his right. From behind one of the gargoyle statues that sat on the ledge, Ahmed saw Erik sitting, his legs danging four stories over the street below. As inappropriately dressed for the weather as he was, Erik was attired even less warmly than Ahmed. He was only wearing a t-shirt and jeans, neither of which seemed to have been washed in a while. Fuck. What did all the psychology books say to do in this sort of scenario? Should he say something? Would that startle him? Should he just run up behind him and drag him away from the edge? That would probably freak him out worse, but it would be better than just _standing_ there doing nothing.

Ahmed opted for speech, it wasn't like Erik was about to jump off or anything, he was just...sitting there. Being cold. "Hey, man," he said quietly, wind whipping his hair back from his face.

"You know what I've been doing up here?" Erik asked without preamble. Ahmed shook his head, then realized that Erik couldn't actually _see_ that, so he spoke instead.

"No."

"I've been sitting up here wondering whether or not I should kill myself," the other boy replied. He didn't sound particularly upset about it. His affect was flat, but as Ahmed inched closer to him, he saw that his left fist was opening and closing convulsively against the stone. His fingernails were broken.

"Don't." Monosyllables were good. Solid. Safe. And encouraging your best friend not to take a flying leap onto the sidewalk was always a good idea.

"Why not?" he didn't appear to be expecting an answer. "I fucked up. I'm fucked up. So fucked. I don't where I've been the last few days. Laptop was expensive and my files. My music is gone, I lost it. Or I never had it. Maybe you can use it. I don't know what happened."

"I know what happened," Ahmed said softly. He was so close to the other boy that he could reach out and touch him. So close. But Ahmed kept his hands at his sides, though they were itching to drag Erik back to safety, but not yet. Not quite yet.

"Do you?" This time Erik looked at him, hair flying back away from his face, looking like a bedraggled black mop in the night air. His nose was gone and the hole where it ought to have been was ringed with blood. Erik gave a muffled sort of sniff and more bright red blood trickled from his nasal cavity, running over his lips. Erik licked it away idly and pulled a face. "Gross."

Not getting any closer to his friend, Ahmed locked eyes with him. Erik's eyes were red and glossy, dark circles ringed them, but he held that gaze as long as he could. Now they were having a conversation. You can't kill yourself when you're having a conversation with someone. It's rude. "Yeah, you...you stopped taking your medicine, man? You remember? You remember you stopped taking your medicine? That's why this is happening Erik. Now...now, if you come with me, we'll go to the doctor's and get you some more. Y-you'll be okay if we just go inside. It-it's fucking cold out, man."

"I don't want to go to the hospital," Erik said, and something like childish rebellion colored his tone. A kid, screwing up his face and refusing to take his medicine. Not because he didn't like the taste, but because he was making some ill-advised power play. Not on Ahmed's watch. "Don't want to go, they can't fix me anyway, have you seen my nose? I can't find it anywhere."

"You can get another one at the hospital," Ahmed supplied immediately. "If you don't want to get more medicine, we can get you another nose."

Erik shook his head, wiping what was supposed to be his nose on his arm. That explained why he had blood all over his hands. There were cuts on his arms, shallow, they'd stopped bleeding a while ago. "I don't want to go. I want to stay here. It's nice here. Isn't it nice, Ahmed? And you can see the stars."

That was a lie, with the city lights, you couldn't see any stars at all. Maybe Erik was so fucked up at this point, he thought he could see stars, Ahmed had no fucking idea how his brain worked. Were hallucinations common among people with manic depression? Fuck if he knew, all he knew was Erik and Erik was about as uncommon as it got. "Yeah, it's great," Ahmed said, feeling an antsy anxiety building up in his chest. How long did it take for someone to get hypothermia? His own fingertips and nose were starting to go numb and he'd only been up there for five minutes. How long had Erik been on the roof? "Listen, dude, you come with me now, okay? I'll drive you to the hospital. You...you're bleeding, you know. And you were downstairs? You cut yourself downstairs? You might have tetanus or some shit, we need to get you checked out."

Losing eye contact with his friend, Erik shrugged as he looked over the city and observed, very logically, "Doesn't matter if I have tetanus if I'm dead. Get a new nose for me, for the funeral, will you? So it can be open casket. The wake, I mean. I know I said I don't want a wake, but I do, you know, it's a school day, it'll be on a school day and no one will be able to come. It would be awful if no one c-came to see me, just awful." Erik's voice, that lovely, perfect voice, cracked just then.

It would be so easy to be moved to tears by this display, but Ahmed was having none of it. "If we have to scrape your bony ass off the pavement, there won't be a casket, what's left of you would fit in a shoe box." Erik looked back at him then, his deep-set eyes not reflecting any light. For a moment, victory flared in Ahmed's chest. _Yes! _Erik was looking at him, they were conversing, he was going to be...

"There are other ways of committing suicide that don't involve leaping from tall buildings, you know."

_Fuck_. "Oh God, Erik, you didn't...you didn't take something did you?" This time tears did sting at Ahmed's eyes. If he...he might already be too late. Poison control, why didn't he have the number for poison control in his phone? What the hell kind of friend was he?

"No, I didn't," Erik said sedately and Ahmed felt his heart begin to beat again. "I was just going over my options. God, I'm tired. I don't know when I slept last. Are you tired, Armand? What time is it? Do you have any cash, I smoked all the weed I had like...four hours ago. Days ago. Hours. I don't remember, do you have any cash? I should get high, I'm much better when I'm high."

"Erik," Ahmed said, not above bargaining – not above _begging_ at this point. "If you let me take you to the hospital, I will buy you all the weed you want for the rest of your natural life, just come to my car with me, okay? Okay?"

Amazingly, Erik swung his legs over the ledge, his feet landing on the blessedly solid roof below them. "We're going to go smoke? I want to get high, like, Lucy in the Sky, that'd be great now."

Whatever it took. Whatever it took. And was he quoting the fucking Beatles? Right now, of all times, Erik was going to quote the fucking Beatles? For a brief instant, Ahmed was agog and he wondered if this was just some sick fucking prank Erik planned to get them all worked up so he could have a good hard laugh. That thought didn't last long. Seeing Erik bloody, noseless, shivering involuntarily in the cold in that threadbare t-shirt...no, this was no joke. "Yeah, man. Yeah, we'll go smoke. Whatever you want. Just come with me. We'll go in my car, okay?" And Ahmed reached out a hand to Erik, a hand with fingers attached that had grown numb in the cold.

Miraculously, Erik took the offered hand and he allowed himself to be led to the ladder. Ahmed made him go first, he didn't want to give the guy a chance to double-back to the ledge once he had opened the hatch. Erik made his descent slowly, shakily, without any of his usual grace. His foot slipped a few rungs from the bottom, as Ahmed was climbing down, and the taller boy fell with a dull metallic thump, a skinny pile of limbs all askew on the landing.

Ahmed jumped the rest of the way down, green eyes gone wide as he knelt down beside Erik, asking, "Are you okay? What happened, did you hurt your head? Erik? Erik!"

Erik's eyes were open and staring and he said, simply, "Ouch." A beat longer and he followed up with, "I banged my elbow." Then he blinked. "Ahmed? When did you get here? I thought you were mad at me."

This caused Ahmed to blink and then feel a wave of guilt wash over him and twist in his stomach. "Why'd you think I was mad at you, buddy?" Was this his fault then? He triggered this episode – no. No, stop that, Erik wasn't taking his drugs, this was bound to happen anyway.

"'Cause the car – I'm sorry about the car. I was being stupid. I was upset. I didn't want to scare you guys. I didn't mean to scare you guys. I'm sorry."

Why was it, the only time Erik ever apologized for something was when he was high or otherwise mentally incapacitated? Because, you know, just once, just _once_, it would be really nice for Ahmed to hear it from Erik when he wasn't all set to forgive him anyway. Whenever Erik apologized, Ahmed had to forgive him immediately, just because he was grateful that Erik hadn't tried to off himself again. "Oh, that?" Ahmed said, shrugging it off with a nervous laugh. "Forget it, man. Water under the bridge, I'm not mad, I stopped being mad about that days ago. You want to get in _my _car now? I'll drive."

"I really am sorry," Erik said, sitting up, then flinching and squeezing his eyes shut tight. "Ouch. I'm dizzy. My head hurts. Hurts to breathe. Ow. I'm sorry. I didn't want you to be mad at me. You're my best friend. I don't have anyone other than you, I don't know what I'd do to myself if you were mad at me. I'm sorry, I didn't want to make you mad. I didn't - " Before Erik could keep going, dig himself into a mental hole of apologies, Ahmed did the only thing he could think of to make him stop. He closed the distance between himself and his friend and gave Erik a long, firm hug, which the other boy feebly returned.

"I'm not mad," Ahmed said soothingly into Erik's ear. "Nope. Not mad. I want to hang out with you, we haven't done that in a while. You want to get in the car now? You and me, no one else?"

"Yeah," Erik whispered, his grip tightening around Ahmed.

"Cool. Let's go." The shorter, darker boy had to hoist his friend up off the ground and Erik leaned heavily on him as they made their way slowly down the stairs and out the side entrance, which Ahmed locked quickly behind them. He didn't bother with the lights or with turning down the heat. Tim probably would understand if he had to pay a little extra on the bills this month. After assisting Erik into the back of the van, so he could lay on the mattress if he wanted, Ahmed fumbled around in his glove compartment and pulled out a joint. He ran back to where his friend was lying, lit it for him and handed it over. "You want to smoke, man? You said you wanted to smoke."

"Smoke," Erik said feebly, opening his eyes halfway and accepting the offer. "Yeah. Yeah, I said that, didn't I?"

"You sure did," Ahmed replied easily, closing the trunk and running to the driver's side door, jumping into the van and not bothering with a seat belt. With Erik subdued in the back seat, he drove to the hospital as quickly as he could without going over the speed limit and getting them pulled over. After he started the engine, Ahmed turned the heat on, high. It didn't take too long before the car started to smell and he realized that Erik likely hadn't showered in days, but he didn't comment, just kept driving, eyes focused unblinking on the road in front of him.

Once he got to the hospital, however, Ahmed was struck with indecision. Was Erik still pediatric, technically? Or did they have to go to the adult hospital? Should he take an emergency entrance? Where the hell was he going to park the van?

In the end, Ahmed parked the van where ever the fuck he felt like it, parking tickets were not foremost on his mind at the moment. Pulling open the trunk, Ahmed found Erik lying placidly in the back where he left him. He hadn't smoked the entire joint, he used about half of it to burn a hole in the mattress. It didn't occur to Ahmed to be angry about that, either the wasted weed or the mattress. "Come on, man, we're going to take a walk."

"We're at the hospital," Erik said flatly.

What was there to say to that? "Uh, yeah. I told you we were going to the hospital," Ahmed replied with a slow nod, holding out his hand again, praying Erik would take it.

He did not, but he did start to ease his lanky frame out of the car. "Do I get to commit myself this time?" he asked Ahmed curiously. "They don't make you stay as long when you commit yourself, do they?"

"Nah, dude, not long at all, like...three days," Ahmed said quickly, pulling that figure out of his ass. Honestly, he had no idea if it was better to admit yourself or not, he just wanted to get Erik _inside_ without _dragging_ him inside. No stretchers, no restraints, just a clean bed and a shower for his best buddy and a new round of drugs. Erik got out of the car on his own, but he didn't protest when Ahmed slung an arm around his waist to keep him upright as they walked toward the emergency room.

Erik's gait became more staccato the longer they walked, the brighter the lights of the emergency room glowed. Ahmed noticed, but assumed it was because his friend was tired. He would be too, he was sure. Once they were through the door, Ahmed let go of Erik, intending to go to the front desk and find some help. His progress was impeded, however, when Erik grabbed hold of the back of his jacket and pulled Ahmed back into him, with some unforeseen reserve of strength in those thin fingers.

"This is a _hospital_," he hissed, his voice dark and his bloodshot eyes shining murderously now. "I _told_ _you_," he continued, his tone rising in volume as a young Hispanic woman in the chair closest to them got up and moved to the other side of the room. "_FUCKING TOLD YOU!_" he was screaming now as nurses and orderlies began to walk quickly toward them, assessing what the problem was. "_I TOLD YOU NO FUCKING HOSPITALS! YOU DIDN'T LISTEN! THOUGHT YOU WERE MY FRIEND!" _A black man in blue scrubs was approaching Erik rapidly from behind and two other stocky young men closing in on him from either side.

"LIAR!" Erik shrieked, shoving Ahmed away from him. He landed hard on his ass and watched helpless as his best friend in the world was quickly restrained by hospital personnel. "YOU LIAR, AHMED! I HATE YOU! I FUCKING _HATE YOU!_ ALL YOU FUCKING LIARS! Should have let me die, motherFUCKER! SHOULD HAVE LET ME _DIE!_"

A young woman with blonde hair was coming toward Ahmed now. If he had looked at her, he would have known that she was on the heavy side, with glasses and long strawberry blonde hair swept back into a braid. He wasn't looking at her, though. He had eyes only for Erik, his friend, still screaming bloody murder as he was half-dragged away. The young nurse knelt down on the floor beside Ahmed. Smart woman. If she'd tried to help him, to make him stand up, he'd have screamed too.


	43. You Are My Home

AN: Whew, well, thanks for sticking around through the Chapters of Angst and Torment. I hope we don't need to revisit that theme any time soon. I can confidently report, however, that things are definitely on the up-and-up from hereon out! Also, my song choice for this chapter is probably a LITTLE too sappy for these boys, but you know they love each other underneath all the bitching.

**Googleeyes: **Hey, don't despair! There might be a Christmas miracle to look forward to! 'Tis the season for impossible things to go down, right?  
**Mominator: **You know, I really thought Christine was going to see what Erik really looks like LONG before this point. I still hold out hope that it will happen, but he keeps lucking out as far as that goes. As far as Erik's symptoms, he was in the middle of a mixed state, which happens in people with bipolar disorder where symptoms of mania and depression occur simultaneously. Additionally he hadn't slept for a few days together AND he wasn't eating or drinking much of anything, so it was his illness combined with a bunch of other problems. It just felt a little cruel to be like, "Ah! Erik's crazy! Also, HIS FACE IS FALLING OFF!" I didn't want to scar Christine for life after all, I'm not quite as mean as Gaston Leroux ;-)

* * *

_Others may leave, but you will still be there  
Touching the tears that fill my eyes  
When I am lost, you are my light  
You are the love that never dies_

_You are my home  
You make me strong  
And in this world of strangers  
I belong to someone  
You are all I know  
You're all I have  
I need you so_

_-The Scarlet Pimpernel  
_

It had been a long and miserable night for Ahmed. After telling a seemingly endless line of nurses that, no, his friend wasn't on drugs (pot didn't count, he knew they were just trying to make sure that Erik wasn't on the tail end of a bad acid trip), he wound up calling Maddy. Then Chester. Then Tim. Then Charlie. Apparently all of them decided to split up and take different cars to search him out. As a result, they were all at different ends of the state and Tim was the one who got to the hospital first. That just resulted in more tension and nail-biting since Tim wasn't a blood relative and couldn't actually sign anything, so they had to wait another twenty minutes in the waiting room until Charlie could do the necessary paperwork...which they discovered, after all that crap, was totally unnecessary since the emergency room staff had managed to talk Erik down into a more lucid state and he'd just admitted himself while they waited for Charlie and his Blue Cross card. And no one was allowed in to see him anyway.

After that time, there was nothing anyone could do. Since they were not blood relatives, Tim and Ahmed were just expected to leave – which was the most bullshit rule in the history of humanity. Of course, Ahmed did not get any truly restful sleep that night. Or the next night. All of his exams were either take-home or had been wrapped up the week prior, which was great because he was getting absolutely no work done and his days consisted largely of calling Madeline, Tim, Charlie and Chester alternatively for some kind of update on Erik's condition. Finally, on Monday, right before an emergency rehearsal for what everyone was calling, 'The Gala Performance from Hell,' Madeline called Ahmed and told him that Erik was feeling much better and was up for visitors if he wanted to drop by after rehearsal.

Fuck that noise. Ahmed didn't waste a moment's time, he maneuvered the van out of the place where he'd parked it and made a beeline for the hospital. Weirdly, Erik was not actually in the psych ward, which was apparently full to the gills for people suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder and their room availability was further diminished since that section of the hospital was undergoing construction.

It took a bit of doing, wandering the labyrinthine corridors, looking for his friend's room, but at last he found it, helped a great deal by the fact that Madeline came out of one of the doors and he found it hard to believe that his friend's mom had taken up part-time employment as a candy striper. "Ahmed!" she called, somewhat too loudly causing a harried-looking nurse to glare at her from over a clipboard. "Come in, I was just going to get coffee, he's awake and chatting."

Uncomfortable as ever in the hospital environment and nodded – then tensed just a little bit when Maddy pulled him in for an unexpected hug. "I'm so glad you came, he'll be so happy to see you – but don't tell Tim I called, he'll kill me for getting you out of rehearsal." Awkward as it was, Ahmed hugged his friend's mom back, kind of giving her a little shoulder pat for reassurance. Maddy gave him a very quick kiss on the cheek and told him he was, "a great kid," before making her way toward the cafeteria, leaving Ahmed free to pay his friend a little visit.

"Hey man," Erik said, sitting up just a bit on the bed, the slight grin on his pale face, his bare arms still bearing the healing lacerations of Saturday night. Noseless and sallow as he looked, the effect was rather ghastly. Ahmed swallowed convulsively and allowed himself a very small smile in return.

"Hey," he said, sitting down next to the bed, taking note of the drip running into his arm. Erik noticed where his friend's eyes were going and he chuckled weakly.

"Apparently, I'm _really_ fucking dehydrated," he said sleepily, words slurring as his eyelashes fluttered, a bit too heavy to keep open. "I'm insanely fucked up right now. Sedated. Really sedated. Fucking love valium, man. Fucking _love. _I don't even think I'm on it, but I fucking love it."

This time Ahmed could permit himself a laugh, "I can see that. Happy now?"

"Awesome." A pause so long Ahmed thought he'd fallen asleep. Then, "I can't remember anything I did the other night. Not a fucking thing. Was it bad?" Hazel eyes cracked open a little to regard Ahmed warily though the haze of drugs.

Maybe he shouldn't tell him. After all, what was the guarantee he'd even remember this conversation? And then they'd have to go over it all again later and it would suck just as much the second time. Third time, since they'd all lived it in the first place. But Erik was still staring at him and he apparently had no intention of going to sleep until he got the whole story out.

"Uh, yeah," Ahmed nodded, not really meeting Erik's gaze. "It was bad. Really, really bad. But we're good now, so don't worry about it, we're all cool you didn't...like, attack anyone. Just beat yourself up and scared the crap out of Raoul and Christine."

"Shit," the doped up boy in the bed breathed. "They okay?"

On this point Ahmed was quick to reassure him. "Yeah! They're fine, Christine's actually really worried about you, she keeps calling wanting to know how you are. She said she wanted come to the hospital and see you, I'll tell her to come later, if you want. I figured today you'd be asleep or just completely out of it."

Erik nodded weekly, winding one finger idly around the tube connecting the bag of whatever was supposed to re-hydrate him to his hand. "Probably better for her that she stay away. Not so pretty here, am I?"

Drawing slightly closer to the bed, Ahmed reached over and stopped Erik playing with the hospital equipment. "Don't flatter yourself. You've never been pretty." Not bad, he managed to tease another tired smile out of Erik who closed his eyes again and sighed, "Yeah, I suppose so."

Looking around at the beige walls and crisp white sheets, Ahmed was quiet for a minute before asking, "How long are they keeping you here this time?"

"Not long," Erik said, not opening his eyes. "Not long. Maybe...another week? At least four, five days. 'Til I'm stable and they re-adjusted my meds. The dosage. And they're convinced I'll take them. I guess I can _demand_ to leave, since I apparently signed myself up for this. I don't remember, but I figure...maybe I should stay a while. Until I get the 'all clear.'"

"I don't know why you didn't just...you know. Stick with them to begin with," Ahmed said and he tried his damnedest not to make it sound like an accusation.

Now probably wasn't the best time to get on Erik's back about neglecting his self-care routine for months and Ahmed didn't want to nag, his bed-ridden friend, but he just couldn't understand why Erik stopped taking his pills in the first place. The meds kept Erik mellow – not really mellow, he could actually function normally when he was on them. It wasn't as though Ahmed was all about maintaining the stranglehold that prescription drug companies had on America, but he couldn't deny that sometimes they were necessary and even _really_ effective. Erik was great when he was on his meds, really great. Why he wouldn't want to take them was utterly beyond him. "You know you need them."

"I _know_ I need them." Had he not been stoned out to the edge of oblivion, Erik would have snapped. As it as, he just sounded exhausted. "I just don't want to need them," he concluded tiredly.

Try as he might, Ahmed couldn't understand what this guy, his best friend since childhood, meant. There was a lot about Erik he didn't understand. It seemed simple to him: if you're sick, you take what you need to get better. If Erik was diabetic, he would take insulin. It wasn't like he tried to get out of those phlebotomies he had to take and those made him feel like shit. "I don't know why you didn't take them, dude, I'm sorry, but I don't get it."

"Of course you don't." Unlike his usually caustic delivery, these words weren't spoken with exasperation or anger, just terrible loneliness. "I know I should take my pills. Every day. When I'm supposed to. I know everyone likes me better on them – fuck it, _I _like me better on them. But that's not the point. I don't want to need them because I don't want to be dependent. Not just the pills, but with people. You and my parents and Chester and Tim. I don't want to have to need you guys. And I do. I really fucking do."

Okay, now Ahmed was kind of offended. Flattered, but offended. Did that make sense? "Erik, we'll do anything for you, you know that, right? It's not like we think you're a burden. Yeah, you fuck up sometimes and make an ass out of yourself, but everyone does that - "

"Do you think, Ahmed?" Erik interrupted sedately, "that maybe it's a burden on _me _being stuck with you? Not that I don't love you guys, I do, I really love you guys, but I fucking hate being stuck with you. And being sick, you know? I'm talented. Really fucking talented. And I could do lots of shit, but I can't 'cuz I'm here. Forever. I'll always need someone around to drive me to and from the hospital every six months and let's face it, I don't think I'll _ever_ be okay enough...you know, to live alone. I need people to remind me to _eat_ for fuck's sake. No, I can't go anywhere and the best I'll ever get is Memorial and that's not bad, it's not, and most of the time I don't mind, but sometimes...fucking sucks, man. To peak at eighteen."

Thank merciful Allah that Erik's eyes were closed. It would have been too much of a gay moment for him to see that his little tale of woe actually had tears welling up in Ahmed's eyes. Never happened. The hospital lights were too bright, reflecting off all that white. If his voice cracked, it was because he was coming down with a cold. Winter was bearing down on them, don't forget.

"So, that...all that, just, like, has been coming to a head for a while?"

Erik nodded. "Yeah. You guys can go off, do whatever, _be_ whatever and you'll all be great. I could be great. But I'll be here. And that sucks."

Before he even finished his diatribe, Ahmed was shaking his head. "I'm not going anywhere – no, Erik, I'm not. What the hell would I do with myself if I didn't have your bony ass to chase everywhere? I promise man, promise, right here that if you want to just get the fuck out of here for a while, I'll chase you down. Hang on, no, that's not a promise. That's a threat. I will chase you all over creation and there's nothing you can do to get rid of me. I'm your common sense. I am officially taking over the job as your common sense. Now you can't get rid of me."

Erik's eyes cracked open a bit. "Never? You're killing me, Ahmed." But he was smiling and looked more relaxed than he ever did when he was hopped up on painkillers.

"Go to bed, dude," Ahmed said, settling back into his chair. "I'll be around when you get up."


	44. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

AN: Hi again! I'm churning out these Christmas chapters in an attempt to keep them seasonal, I don't want the holiday to pass by without proper note in this story, like I did with Halloween. And I have SUCH ambitious plans for what happens _next_ semester! I'm thinking I'll cut this story off around chapter 50 and publish part two as a separate story since this one is really more about the characters and the next half will be a lot more about the theatre. Let me know what you think, if you have any opinions either way on the matter.

**Googleeyes: **Yeah, Erik can be a depressing kind of guy, unfortunately, but he's getting better! Well...a little better, anyway. And Christine is DETERMINED to be happy and peppy and bursting with love, but if she'd seen Erik's actual face, it would probably be a bit more difficult for her at this point.  
**The Little Corinthian: **Thank you so much! I know everyone's experience with mental illness varies dramatically depending on the person and situation, I just wanted to show one instance with one person in one particular set of circumstances. But yes, with regards to lightness, that song is SO appropriate for those boys, even if they would never admit it to each other. Hope you enjoy this chapter!

* * *

_Have yourself a merry little Christmas.  
Make the Yuletide gay.  
Next year all our troubles will be miles away._

_Here we are, as in olden days,  
Happy golden days of yore.  
Faithful friends, who are dear to us  
Gather near to us, once more._

_Through the years, we all will be together,  
If the Fates allow.  
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow.  
So, have yourself a merry little Christmas now._

_-Meet Me In St. Louis_

Tim was sighing. That was never good. When Tim sighed, it was never loud, he never seemed to want to draw that much attention to himself, but he always did. With his head slightly bowed, fingers massaging the bridge of his nose, pressing his glasses back against his eyes...yeah, it wasn't much, but it always made Christine feel _really_ bad about herself. As though it was entirely her fault that this production was falling apart. It was Wednesday now and they were having a full-company rehearsal, both the acting majors and the adult company of Memorial had congregated at the theatre and were trying to patch together a show out of the refuse. With Erik in the hospital and Gaspard, their musical director, similarly indisposed, Chester and Madeline were taking turns being the accompaniest. They were going to try and incorporate a full band on Thursday. God help them.

Though Christine was a bit too shy around the adults in the group to actually engage them in conversation, her peers had no such scruples and as Tim sighed and called for a five, Charlotte turned to a handsome African American fellow behind her and immediately began bitching. "Okay, seriously, what gives?" she asked, twirling a lock of curly red hair around her finger impatiently. "I mean, this is _not_ supposed to be this hard, I don't know _why _Tim scrapped the whole just-do-shit-we're-actually-performing formula. Because this _Holiday Inn_ bullcrap? Not for me."

The gentleman she was talking to, who was named John, just shrugged and gave Charlotte a supportive shoulder-pat. "I have no idea," he said in a deep baritone. "I think, okay, I _heard_ and I'm swearing you to silence right now, that Tim's going to try to snatch up the rights to _Les Mis_ before anyone else does. And that's why he's running around turning this into some MGM fucktacular."

"But why would doing _Les Mis_ make him change the gala?" Christine piped up, overcome by curiosity. The man Charlotte was talking to gave her a long, speculative look before he decided that she looked trustworthy enough.

"Well, the deal is, he would want to mount a production in the spring, meaning no _Urinetown_. And songs from the spring musical make up about half of the show. Now, why we couldn't just do half performance selections and half Christmasy stuff is beyond me, but that's probably why I'm a lowly hoofer and not the artistic director." John rolled his eyes at that and then excused himself for a cigarette break, leaving Charlotte and Christine to continue the discussion.

"MGM fucktacular, huh?" Christine asked rather rhetorically, watching John pick up a few followers who wanted to brave the cold for nicotine. "I hadn't thought about it like that."

"Oh, I had," Charlotte nodded sagely. "I have this whole theory going that Tim fell asleep watching _Stagedoor Canteen_ and that was where the madness started."

It was a theory with merit, Christine had to admit. The whole show was shaping up to be vaudeville gone wrong. There were musical number and scenes all mashed together without a definite through-line. There was some thread of connective tissue there, they all knew it, some theme of nostalgia for better days that seemed to entirely characterize the modern experience of Christmas, but their show had an artificial feeling to it. People smiled and sang and told jokes, but it didn't feel very organic. It was like they all knew the show was a farce and couldn't bring themselves to take the experience seriously...and, even though she had not known these people for long, Christine was pretty sure she knew why the cast, both young and not so young, were slightly green around the gills this holiday season.

It all came down to Erik, in the end. Everything in this theatre seemed to begin and end with Erik. For all his grouchiness and nay-saying, when it came right down to it, he would sell a performance like the rent was due tomorrow (as Chester would say). When the lights hit him on that stage, it was like Erik ceased to be and he was working only for the performance, but he was currently inaccessible and without him around the wind seemed to be taken out of all their sails.

In an effort to get a bit of wind back, Christine decided that she was going to visit him in the hospital, just to check up on him. Freddy warned her against it while the two of them opened The Bistro. It had been an oddly serious conversation that left Christine feeling as though her friend thought she was experiencing a mild case of Stockholm Syndrome where Erik was concerned, which was just crap, in her humble opinion. Sure, the events of four days ago had probably been one of the most terrifying experiences of her life, but the floodgates of compassion were opened within her when she found out that Erik was sick. Was what he did and said to her wrong? Yes, absolutely. Should it ever happen again? No, absolutely not. Even though Christine had a really enormous tolerance for people giving excuses for bad behavior, she really didn't think that Erik being manic-depressive was an _excuse_ so much as it was a _reason_. And even if it was an excuse, it was a really, really good one.

So, she thanked Freddy for the advice and counted down the minutes until she could go. The theatre still wasn't decorated yet and he promised free drinks to the adult company members and extra credit to the underage company members who would stay after rehearsal and help him with that. Christine had been a bit torn, but she knew this was going to be her last opportunity to see Erik for a while, she was going back to Massachusetts on Sunday for Christmas, and she really wanted to let him know, face to face, that everything was okay between them before they left. If he even remembered that it wasn't, he sounded kind of zoned out when she talked to him on the phone to ask if he was up for a visit the day before.

After finishing up another lackluster musical number, Tim dismissed those who had places to be and Christine hurried out of the auditorium, determined not to catch Freddy's eye. The boy had been giving her reproachful looks all evening and she had _not_ appreciated it in the least. As she collected her things from the girls' dressing room, she let out a small yelp of surprise when she spotted Raoul, of all people, standing awkwardly in the doorway.

"Hey," he said uneasily, leaning against the doorframe and essentially blocking her way out.

"Hey," Christine replied, wondering if he was going to have another heart-to-heart with her about his sex life and wishing that he wouldn't, she had things to do tonight. "Um, sorry, I'm kind of in a hurry, but I'll call you later if you want - "

"I heard you were going to see Erik," Raoul interrupted. It was so rude and so out of character for him, that Christine was momentarily speechless.

"Uh, yeah," she confirmed, shrugging her backpack on over her winter coat. "Visiting hours are only until eight, so I've kind of got to motor."

It seemed that there was some kind of internal battle going on within Raoul. On the one hand, he looked like he really wanted to leave and on the other...he still looked as though he wanted to leave, but was forcing himself to stay. "I...um...Idon'tthinkthat'sagoodidea," he said all in one breath. Once Christine figured out what he said, her eyes narrowed at him and she looked very cross indeed.

"Oh, really?" Once she wasn't so pissed, she and Freddy were going to have a little conversation about what was 'her business' and what was available for public knowledge. "Well, thanks for telling me. I'll keep that in mind. Excuse me."

Raoul finally moved out of the way to let Christine pass into the hall, but he lay a restraining hand on her shoulder as she moved past him. "Just...okay, so, be careful. If you're going to go at all, which I don't think you should. I did some reading on bipolar and...it sounds really terrible and I don't know if you should see him before he gets out of the hospital. What if he snaps again?"

Wow, really? Were they actually having this conversation? Christine had no doubt that Raoul's 'research' had consisted of skimming a Wikipedia page and maybe reading a few blogs. Never mind the fact that she had been worrying herself sick with the same exact questions all day, when someone else questioned the wisdom of her decisions, her hackles went up. "Okay, first of all, he's in the hospital because he's getting better. Ahmed has been to see him a few times and he's fine, so are Madeline and Tim and Chester and they've been there, like, every day. And second, even if this _was_ a bad idea – which I don't think it is – I'm not sure where you and Freddy get off telling me not to go. I'm eighteen, I can vote and I can visit sick friends if I want to."

This feminist rant seemed to have thrown Raoul for a loop. All his tentative resolve seemed to fade a bit and he visibly shrank back, shrugging his shoulders defensively. "I'm worried about you, that's all," he mumbled, his eyes on her feet. "He was really scary that night, if you don't remember. I don't want you to get hurt."

Against her will, Christine's heart softened and, channeling Tim, she sighed and leaned forward to give Raoul a hug. "I appreciate that," she said softly. "But I'm okay, I'll be fine. I'm a 21st century girl, I can handle stuff." And she really, really hoped that she could.

Erik was in the same room that Ahmed visited on Monday, but sitting upright, dressed in his own clothes on top of his covers and there were not any tubes or needles poking out of him. He had even donned his fake nose for the occasion, though Christine would not appreciate the effort, which was probably for the best. "Hi!" she said cheerfully, taking a seat beside the bed Erik was lounging on. It occurred to her to hug him, but they didn't really 'do' that and Christine was not in the mood to break old habits. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," Erik said, giving Christine a wan smile. "A lot better, actually. How are you? Apparently I have a lot of things to apologize for – sorry, I don't remember what I did, but I heard it involved you and I'm really sorry about that."

Christine brushed off his apologies with a wave of her hand and another beatific smile. Her plan was to be as sweet and peppy as possible, in the hopes that it would rub off on Erik. Mental health through osmosis or something. "Don't worry about it, people like, overreact to the max, it wasn't anything really awful."

"What people?" Erik asked, his brow furrowing. Oh, shit. Whoops. Time to salvage this conversation.

"Oh...just...like...people who weren't involved," she said, not smoothly at all. "Like...okay, so, um, Freddy, for example, was being weird. I think he thinks what actually went down was a lot worse than what happened." Probably because she freaked out and cried and carried on like an idiot about it. That would definitely lead someone to think that you were in serious trouble when you actually weren't. Maybe some of her anger with Freddy was unjustified. "Oh!" Christine exclaimed, trying valiantly to change the subject. "Opera!"

Opera was indeed what was on the television, though the volume was off. It did briefly occur to Erik to press her more about what his actions were that night that caused Freddy to overreact...but he didn't feel like it. And, to be honest, Freddy overreacted about a lot of things. Maybe once his body got used to his new medication he would care more, but at the moment, he just simply did not want to be bothered. "Opera, yeah," he said, latching on to this new conversation thread. "The Met does this thing where they tape their performances and show them on PBS. And at some movie theatre up in Mass, but that's expensive."

"I didn't know you liked opera," Christine said curiously. Huh. Another facet of Erik's personality and this one was not at all life-threatening or scary, which was a bonus.

Erik shrugged. "Well, it's not something that often comes up in conversation...do you like opera?"

The answer to that one was...complicated. "Um...I don't _dislike_ opera," she concluded, after a moment of thinking it over. "I don't...think about it much. My dad loves opera, he plays the violin so he gets called on to perform at various things and he used to bring me, but, uh, well, if something's not in English, I get kind of bored kind of fast."

And wasn't that just an ignorant, American thing to say? Christine certainly thought so and the words had come out of her mouth. In that moment, she felt kind of ashamed that she had no interest in or knowledge of opera. Opera was one of those things that smart, cultured people liked. Didn't she want to be smart and cultured? And Erik probably thought she was a complete dumbass now, if he hadn't before. But no, he was just nodding his head slowly, eyes now fixed upon the television.

"No, I get that. But the stuff they show on PBS is subtitled. It's not as though I speak a great number of foreign languages. And it helps to know the basic plot before you watch an opera anyway, things can get complicated. This one isn't bad, it's called _Tosca_, it's about a singer – Tosca, yeah, obviously - and her artist lover Mario and they're in love and shit and then this...police guy, Scarpia shows up because some guy escaped from prison and he's looking for him and he sees Tosca and thinks she's hot. So he imprisons Mario and is going to have him executed – because that's totally what you do when you like a girl, you kidnap her boyfriend and threaten to kill him." Erik rolled his eyes at that, evidently amazed that someone could be that stupid.

"Anyway, some beautiful music happens and people talk about Napoleon and then Scarpia is like, going to rape her – I mean, it's part of a deal to free Mario and then let them both flee the country, but it's still basically rape – and then Tosca kills him and shit goes down." Again, Erik shrugged. "Yeah, that's basically what happens."

"Oh," Christine said, looking back at the television. Even with Erik's synopsis, she could not make heads or tails of where they were in the story. The subtitles said something about living for art and the woman who was singing looked really emotional, but she didn't get it. "Is this your favorite?"

"No," Erik shook his head. "I mean, I like it, but it's not my favorite, Gounod's _Faust_ is my favorite – do you know that story?"

Again, feeling ashamed for being an ignorant American, Christine lowered her eyes and shook her head. "No. I was supposed to read the play in high school, but I just read Cliffnotes. I saw the _Wishbone_ episode, though."

Once more, Erik just nodded in a completely non-judgmental way and some of Christine's righteous indignation was back. Where did those boys get off acting like she was in danger for coming to the hospital? Erik was really agreeable when he was in the hospital, this was turning out to be a lovely visit. "Then you got the basic storyline," he said. "Faust is old and cranky, then the devil shows up and offers him knowledge and Marguerite."

"And she sings "The Jewel Song," right?" Christine asked, proud of herself for knowing _one_ opera-related factoid.

"Yeah, '_A__h,_ _j__e ris de me voir_,'it's pretty. So she gets nice jewels and she and Faust fuck and he takes off – it's not the best feminist opera - then she gets preggers and kills the baby or some shit and goes to jail. Then Faust turns up and she's all dying of...prison, I don't know. And then Marguerite wakes up and sees visions of angels and she and Faust sing together and she dies and Mephistopheles drags him to hell."

It was clear from the slightly confused look on Christine's face that nothing Erik told her had quite the emotional impact he had been anticipating. "It's...ah, more poignant than I make it sound."

"And that's your favorite opera?" Christine asked, eyes bright and inquisitive.

"Yeah, it's great. Beautiful music. I tend to like those operas where women die of mysterious illness that are usually some form of consumption, but they can somehow belt these magnificent arias before they croak. Fuck, in _Götterdämmerung_ , Brunhilde goes on for seventeen minutes before she immolates herself..." There was that blank look again. "Yeah. I'm a dork, it's okay, I embrace the freak within."

"No! It's great, I mean, that you like opera, I just...I've never gotten into it." They watched _Tosca _to the end, with Erik providing commentary whenever Christine became really confused by the story. Naturally, he refrained from telling her the ending. It was rare that he actually had someone in his company who did not know the final scene from _Tosca_ and it gave him pleasure to watch her genuinely shocked reaction as the drama unfolded.

"Whoa," she concluded as the cast took their bows. "That was..."

"Intense?" Erik supplied and Christine nodded.

"Very."

"Speaking of intense," Erik began and for one, brief, nerve-inducing moment, Christine was sure he was going to bring up Saturday night again, "how are rehearsals for the gala going?"

"Horribly," she said, so relieved that she wasn't thrust into an awkward conversation that she didn't even think to sugarcoat. "Like...really badly. It just isn't coming together at _all_. It's not that the individual bits are bad, they just don't make any sense."

A grim look settled upon Erik's countenance. "I was afraid of that," he said with a frown. "Tim's pretty stressed. And I'm not helping. But yeah, usually he's really involved in the process, but he's been so absent really, it's no wonder that the show is moving in a million different directions."

"We're calling it the Gala Performance from Hell."

"Color me surprised." Erik settled back against his bed and sighed. "Fuck. I wish I was there."

"I wish you were there too," Christine said, without any overtures of attempted deception. "The boys' a capella? _So_ bad without you, Tim wants to scrap the whole thing, but it would bring our runtime down to, like, an hour and a half."

They likely would have continued the conversation for some time, had a nurse not poked her head in and politely informed them that it was 7:55 and visiting hours ended at eight. "Oh, crap." Christine sighed. "There's so much stuff going on that I want to tell you...I'll email you, can you use a computer?"

"No," Erik said, rolling his eyes. "No internet, no phone, just the television. Email me anyway, I'll just look it up on my dad's phone when he comes in and – Christine?"

She paused in the act of putting her coat on. "Yeah?"

"Thanks for coming to see me."

This time, Christine did break tradition and leaned over the bed to give Erik a quick hug. "Hey, no problem, anytime. I hope I talk to you before then, but if I don't, Merry Christmas – or whatever it is you celebrate."

Erik smiled thinly and returned the hug, albeit stiffly, but there was an irrepressible gleam of _something_ in his eyes that, if Christine was able to see, bespoke trouble. "Christmas is fine. Merry Christmas, Christine."


	45. I'll Be Home For Christmas

AN: ...yeah, you know that 'Oh, I'll TOTALLY get the next bit up before Christmas!' Whoops. Sorry guys, but you know how ludicrous the holidays can be, I hope you forgive me! I've got a nice, big update for you lovely people and I hope you all had a nice Winter Whatever You Celebrate When You've Got Time Off! And I'd like to extend a big shout-out THANK YOU to BleedingHeartConservative, without whose encouragement, this chapter would have been even LONGER in coming. She rocks, read her stuff if you haven't and if you HAVE already, then re-read it!

**weallfalldown: **Oh, a gleam. Definitely a gleam and not in the Santa Claus twinkle way. Hope you enjoy!  
**The Little Corinthian: **Great Performances is like, God's gift to my television, no kidding, it's too awesome. And I'm glad I make your inner theatre geek happy dance!  
**Googleeyes: **Yeah, Tim needs to get his act together, no kidding. As for the show...Christmas is a time for miracles, right?  
**Mominator: **Oh yeah, Erik has watched a LOT of television and seen a lot of movies, he's slightly wiser than his literary counterpart in that he KNOWS that Stockholm Syndrome is not the best basis for a romantic relationship. And thank you for the Christmas well-wishes, I had a lovely one and I hope your holiday was just as fabulous.

* * *

_I'll be home for Christmas  
You can count on me  
Please have snow and mistletoe  
And presents under the tree  
Christmas Eve will find me  
Where the love light beams  
I'll be home for Christmas  
If only in my dreams_

_Christmas Eve will find me  
Where the love light beams  
I'll be home for Christmas  
If only in my dreams_

_-Ram, Gannon and Kent_

There were distinct, pleasant advantages to admitting oneself to a psychiatric hospital. In the first place, you got to wear your own clothes (as long as those clothes were not deemed to be a threat to yourself or those around you). Though you were not allowed to have a cell phone or a laptop, once you were more or less stabilized on twice your usual dose of medication, they didn't watch you too closely and you could play with your father's iPhone to avoid making conversation with the aforementioned father. And, best of all, once you were lucid and capable of making rational decisions, you got to petition to _leave_, which was just magical.

Erik repeatedly thanked the god he did not believe in as his release papers were signed. The hospital being sightly overbooked probably contributed to his extraordinary good luck, but his psychopharmacologist vouched for him and his medications and David, his therapist, was unreachable by telephone, so the word of the former would have to do. Erik assured the hospital personnel that his dad would be picking him up on his way back from work, packed up his toothbrush, clothes and various bric-a-brac that had been brought in to keep him entertained in a duffel bag and, just like that, he was free. This easily qualified as the best hospitalization that he had ever experienced.

Now he was out, but whether he should be out was anyone's guess. He was still weaning himself off of the double-doses of medication that he had been prescribed to get him mellow quickly, so he was vaguely zombie-ish and his memory wasn't doing too well, but Erik knew he had to get out of that hospital. Not because he was bored (he was), not because he didn't need to be there (though he didn't think he did), but because Memorial _needed _him. That was what he got from Christine's baleful complaints about mens' a capella, Ahmed's veiled comments to the same effect and his mother's out-and-out rants about how _nothing _was working and it was going to be _terrible._ Only his father hadn't beat his breast and carried on about the whole thing. When the subject of the gala came up, he just shrugged uncomfortably and said, "It is what it is." And that was when Erik knew, definitively, that the theatre was in deep shit.

Naturally, his father was _not_ picking him up. His father was running sound for the gala because their usual sound board operator was paranoid about the incoming snowstorm and had locked himself if his apartment with a year's supply of milk and Wonderbread. Nor was his mother picking him up, she was at the theatre along with every other person who might conceivably come and get him. Sure, if he phoned and said he was ready to be picked up, someone would come, but that would cut into rehearsal time and they needed all the rehearsal they could get. The gala was due to start at eight. At 4:37 Erik left the hospital and at 4:56 he caught a RIPTA bus for the theatre and twenty minutes, he was blinking haze out of his eyes and slipping in the through the deserted lobby. The box office was dark, the trees stood tall and dark with all their lights off. Tim was obviously trying to save on electricity this year.

Though the lobby should have been quiet, it was anything but. Even through the heavy wooden doors separating the lobby from the main auditorium, Erik could hear their group of thirty-strong absolutely _mutilating _the "Hallelujah Chorus." Wincing, Erik bypassed the auditorium doors and went right up to the booth where the light and sound boards were kept. Slade, the constant stage manager saw him, but gave very little indication that he cared, other than a slight incline of the head. "Charlie's downstairs trying to mic everyone. Do what you have to."

That was the truly nice thing about Slade; Erik was convinced that he was slightly psychic. Occasionally it could be an annoying attribute for another person to possess, but he used his powers for good, as far as Erik was concerned. Like right now.

Crossing to the sound board, Erik flipped the appropriate switch and activated The God Mic. In actuality it was just a thin microphone attached to the sound board to enable the stage manager to talk to the cast whilst running tech rehearsals, but actors knew that when a booming voice sounded in the darkness, they had best sit up and pay attention.

"The rumors are true, I see," Erik said clearly into the microphone. He could see the company below, all sitting at attention with their mouths hanging open at the sound of his voice and the observation made him smile; he did _so _love making a dramatic entrance. "This is, without a doubt, a disaster beyond anything I could ever have imagined. People will be withdrawing sponsorships left and right, they'll destroy the theatre in their mad rush to the doors and you will all bear responsibility in ruining Christmas once and for all. Shame on you. So, unless you all want to reign in the same circle of Hell as the Burgermeister Meisterburger, pray cease your assault on my eardrums this _minute _until I come down and provide the assistance you so desperately require."

It wasn't that Erik expected people to obey his commands without question, contrary to popular belief, he wasn't quite that arrogant; however when his fellow thespians knew that he could improve their performance a hundred fold, it stood to reason that they would, in this instance, do as he said and stay on stage while he fixed them. No such luck. Erik had barely managed to let himself into the auditorium before he was accosted by no less than a dozen people, with a dozen more hot on the heels of the first pack.

Not for the first time, Erik wondered how he had managed to surround himself with people who were so unabashedly unreasonable.

Madeline reached him first and, in a display of her own personal breed of insanity, drew him in for a hug and then shoved him away from her again and, to complete the sequence, pulled him back to her for a hug that was even more vigorous than the first. "When did you get out of the hospital?!" his mother asked, her expression one of abject shock.

"About an hour ago," Erik said, squirming a little to escape Maddy's embrace, but she held on tight.

"Why didn't you tell us? How did you get here, anyway?"

Really? They were two hours from what was certain to be the most embarrassing performance of any of their lives and his mother wanted to discuss travel arrangements? "I was discharged at five," Erik explained, this time maneuvering successfully away from the woman who birthed him. "You were all here, it wasn't like anyone could pick me up. I took the bus." He had to endure several more hugs, pats on the back and ruffling of his hair as he made his way to the pit. Squinting into the darkness, Erik spied several tuxedoed regulars of the Memorial Rep orchestra pit, but the familiar bald head and long-suffering face of his music teacher was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's Gaspard?" he asked Jeremy, the percussionist. The musician told him that Gaspard was feeling under the weather and didn't want to push himself, so he left Lionel Brouillard in charge of the band. And where was Lionel now? Stuck in traffic. Perfect. So not only did they have a cast that was completely without direction, they had an orchestra with no cohesion.

It was a lot for a slightly woozy, recently hospitalized young man to take on his shoulders, but Erik was nothing if not stupidly ambitious at the worst possible times. "Alright," he barked, gesturing toward the stage. "Everybody up and at 'em! I wasn't exaggerating when I said you sounded terrible – sopranos, have you even _looked_ at the sheet music? I have no idea what you think you're singing, but it's nothing that belongs in Handel's _Messiah_ – and that might be the _least _of your problems. Charlie?"

Erik's father had been standing a bit apart from the main group, his hands filled with cordless microphones, his pockets stuffed with band aids, ace bandages and condoms, wires wrapped like thin scarves around his neck. "Yeah, kiddo?" he asked without even blinking as his son addressed him by his Christian name. From Erik, it was a sign of endearment.

"Mic whoever is left to be micced and then get up to the sound booth. The tenors are _way_ too loud, I don't know if that's a sound problem or an ego problem, but either way, it needs to be fixed." With a nod of understanding, that was precisely what Charlie proceeded to do. Thank Odin for small favors. At least _someone _in this theatre was taking him seriously.

For the next forty-five minutes, Erik worked with the cast who obeyed his suggestions without too much bitching and backbiting. Ordinarily, this sort of thing probably wouldn't have flown, but everyone knew that the show was in trouble just as much as they knew that Erik could hear, sort out and fix these problems. They had moved on from Handel and were trying to tighten up the transitions between the pop standards and Christmas carols. The problem being that there really _was_ no way to transition between pop standards and Christmas carols.

"I feel like a jackass," John said, folding his arms across his chest and frowning at Madeline, his partner in the brief, transitional skit. "_Insisting_ on doing Christmas carols. It feels really pretentious."

"I agree," Madeline said, tossing her hair irritably. "I mean, why? And, can I just state, for the record, that I _hate _these things? Slice of life at the theatre my ass, I would _never _wear this sweater if we weren't doing a fucking holiday show." As though to emphasize her point, she plucked at the bright red sweater dress she had donned over black leggings. Madeline despised sweater dresses, as a general fashion rule.

"So you've told me eight thousand times," Chester shouted hoarsely from the front row. He walked in on the madness that was Erik and the cast about thirty minutes ago and, suffering from a head cold, hadn't wanted to make the effort to tell him check himself back into the hospital like a good little head case. "I didn't care last week when I gave it to you, I don't care now and, honestly sweetheart, the dress should not affect your acting." Slouching down in the chair, he rolled his eyes and shook his head at the ceiling, "And I'm ruining my Chanukah for you bastards, they least you can do is stop complaining about your clothes."

"Ladies, quit it," Erik said, rubbing his eyes. A direct result of being overmedicated was that any and all side effects the pills could usually boast were magnified to an unhappily apparent level. As such, Erik was dizzy, tired and slightly nauseated, but he was pressing on, not about to let the people he cared about most in the world crash and burn because he was feeling a little under the weather.

John made an irritated noise in the back of his throat and gave Erik a pointed look. "Come on, Erik, you have to admit, this entire thing is just a little ridiculous."

"Christmas is ridiculous in general," Erik snapped back. "I have not met one person in my entire life who honest to God enjoys Christmas. It's a pain in the ass, everyone knows it's a pain in the ass, but we need to make this cheap and peppy, because that's what the crowds expect. The bastards."

"I-I...I like Christmas." Christine, who had been sitting very quietly during this entire drama, chose this most inopportune moment to assert herself.

Currently a victim of that most dastardly demon, PMS, Charlotte had a good hearty laugh at the other girl's expense. "Oh, hon, just save it. We don't need this to turn into _A Charlie Brown Christmas_ on top of everything else."

"Oh, shut the fuck up, Lucy Van Pelt," Armand offered in an uncharacteristic display of anger and swearing. _Everyone's _eyes were drawn to him in that moment, but he did not seem to care at all as he removed his eyeglasses and cleaned the lenses on his striped scarf. "Maybe this entire performance wouldn't suck as badly as it does if everyone was a little less morose and a little more jolly."

"Ho. Ho. Ho," Chester intoned glumly.

"No wait," Christine said, bolstered by Armand's slightly irritable support. "I think he's right – okay, yeah, Christmas is cheesy and Christmas specials are cheesy, but this is like one big theatrical Christmas special so...isn't a little cheese appropriate?"

There was a moment of contemplative silence, then Sorelli said, "Christine, Armand, you guys know I love you. But that is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard."

"From the mouths of babes," an older veteran of Memorial muttered in the back. "I'm going on a cigarette break. Call me back in when you actually have a plan that isn't letting the children run the show. I swear, this theatre is going to the dogs."

The more experienced actress did make good on her word and took off for a cigarette in the snow, bringing more than half of the cast with her. Madeline, in a display of acute maturity, flipped the entire group of retreating backs the bird and sank down to sit in the middle of the stage. "I didn't _think_ it was possible to be on the rag fifteen years after menopause, but what do I know?"

"Eh, leave her alone," John replied, joining Madeline on the floor. "Someone's ovaries drying up doesn't make them any less of a bitch."

"Ew, wow, John, thanks for the mental image," his wife Beverley said, sitting on the choral risers toward the back of the stage. "Merry Christmas, y'all, here, have some dried ovaries."

Twisting her fingers around her hair, Christine worriedly muttered, "I didn't want to cause a problem."

"Oh, honey, don't even worry about it," Jamie said, walking to Christine's side and putting an arm around her shoulders. "It wasn't you at _all_. The problem is, people are too cynical for Christmas, that's all. Why are are we singing Christmas carols? Like, really, that's the big question? Um, duh, because it's _Christmas, _hello! You sing Christmas carols at Christmas, you don't need an excuse – okay, well, you _shouldn't_ need an excuse. I know everyone wants to be all PC and that's great, but this is the Christmas show - "

"Holiday Gala," Madeline corrected. "Not everyone's a Christian."

"Yeah," Jamie acknowledged, "but the Christians have the best holiday songs. I mean, I love Adam Sandler as much as everyone, but you have to admit, the Jews don't really have catchy tunes to get us in the holiday spirit. And I don't even _know_ if there are Kwanzaa songs." And she turned and looked expectantly at John.

In response to her assumption, Sorelli got a blank look for her troubles. "Uh...I don't do Kwanzaa," John said, slightly uncomfortably. "I don't even think I know anyone who celebrates Kwanzaa."

"Well, there you go," Jamie said, undeterred. "And Christmas doesn't have to be really religious either, it's more like...a concept. A happy, fluffy, love people concept where carols don't need any explanation. Or, they didn't, in like, the forties, but people are hypersensitive now – but we've been singing shit _from_ the forties, so that's all the explanation I need."

"Stop!" Erik fairly shouted, fixing Jamie with an odd, calculating gaze. The chipper dancer blushed as dark as her currently fire engine red hair.

"Whoops. Sorry, non-Christians, I'll get off the soap box - "

"No, no," Erik said quickly, bounding up on stage with everyone else. "Can you guys remember _exactly _what you just said?"

"Um. No," Madeline replied looking puzzled.

"Well, come up with a near approximation of that, write it down, memorize it."

"Um, why?" his mother asked, her look of confusion deepening.

"Because _that_ is going to be our transition," boomed a familiar tenor from the back of the house. Squinting into the darkness, Tim's sleek form was easily discerned, rapidly walking toward the stage. "That was brilliant – Erik, I don't know what you are doing here, I really don't want to know how you got here, but bravo. Chester, dear, get that boy in a costume, we have a show to put on."

The arrival of Tim, after his days and weeks of absence threw the cast into a flurry of energy and activity. With his guiding hand, an acute ear for sour notes courtesy of Erik and a brand new plausible explanation for the awkward arrangement of songs and sleigh bells, the show, miracle of miracles, came together at the last possible moment.

The cocktail hour was at eight and their audience of patrons and other fans of the arts who had bought their tickets were kept out of the auditorium until the last possible moment. Lionel turned up just in time for Erik to run through the portions of the show he was involved with once with the cast and orchestra. Luckily for everyone, he really only needed one rehearsal. Though he was still woozy and after the dances, his legs felt like jelly, he ignored his body's warnings and pressed on, overheating in the corduroy pants and sweater set Chester found for him.

Raoul _still_ had not learned how to snap his fingers, but the other boys covered well for him as they quietly rehearsed "For the Longest Time" in the dressing room, Erik holding his own even has he mopped up sweat and tried to apply his makeup. Naturally, his evident distress did not fly under Ahmed's radar undetected, "You alright, dude?"

It immediately occurred to Erik to snap something back about Ahmed minding his own business, but his friend had been good as gold to not rant and rave at him about leaving the hospital so early. The plain truth was, Ahmed was just as worried about the gala as everyone else in the cast and he knew that, with Gaspard out of commission, Erik was the only one with the musical know-how to pull the show together. That did not mean that he was going to stop worrying about his friend, though. "I'm a little...out of it," Erik admitted, untwisting the top off of his container of foundation. "But I'll live, just...um..."

"What?"

Erik licked his lips nervously and gave Ahmed a slight half-smile. "Just stick a chair off stage left. Just if I need to sit for a minute."

Ahmed went off to do as he was told and in the meantime, Freddy shyly approached his other roommate. "Hey, Erik, can we talk for a minute?" Erik nodded his permission, but his eyes were in the mirror as he tried to clear up the dark circles under his eyes.

Exhaling a sigh of relief, Freddy plopped down on the stool next to Erik and looked at him nervously. "How are you feeling?"

"Passably human, how are you?"

Freddy frowned a bit, not sure if Erik was mad at him or not. He certainly didn't seem to be paying him the slightest bit of attention. Then again, he hadn't offered Erik the slightest bit of attention while he was in the hospital, so he supposed they were even. "Um. I just wanted to, uh, ask how you were feeling. I was going to call you. Wish you Merry Christmas if you were still in the hospital. Um. Yeah..."

Letting out a sigh of his own, Erik dropped his makeup sponge and turned to regard Freddy frankly. "Okay, in the interest of saving time, if this is about whatever it was Christine mentioned – your overreacting to whatever I did last weekend, then don't worry about it. I'm not annoyed with you for not visiting or calling if you're not still angry at me for whatever the hell it was I did. Bygones?"

A look of relief spread across Freddy's face and he reached out to give the other boy a big hug. "Yeah. I've been feeling kind of guilty. And guilty does not look good on me."

After that odd non-apology was made, Freddy went off to tend to his own pre-show goings on and Erik was left to finish his makeup and reflect on how every time he was in the hospital, it was the same old thing. People who knew him well were usually frustrated that he managed to land himself in again, people who didn't know him well were usually freaked out (as evidenced by the fact that Raoul had done his damnedest to avoid him all evening), but after a suitable period of time, everyone became _sympathetic_ and _understanding_ and, oh, _poor, mentally-ill _Erik. It was a pain in the ass, but the cycle would probably continue to repeat itself forever and ever until someone invented a magic pill that just took all the crazy away.

The evening proceeded...not beautifully, but passably. No one embarrassed themselves and while it was not the greatest gala performance in the history of Memorial Rep (none could hold a candle to the night Erik stood in for Freddy, after all) it was decidedly not terrible. The songs and scenes all went off without too much of a hit and there was real, vigorous applause after the "Hallelujah Chorus" which pleased Erik to no end. In a rare moment of consideration for others, he endeavored not to brag too much about it since he didn't relish getting a thwack upside the head from one of his less than admiring castmates. Anyway, he was too damn tired by the end of that number to do much more than collapse in the chair Ahmed had so thoughtfully provided for him.

The night had taken its toll on him, no doubt about that. Luckily, everyone was so concerned about getting on stage for a bow, that no one noticed the lanky figure, hunched in a shadowed corner in the wings, shaking very slightly with his face in his hands. All in all, Erik thought as a dull grayish fuzz encroached on his business, it wasn't a bad deal. At least now he could probably get away with not buying anyone Christmas presents. Saving your nearest and dearest friends and colleagues from utter humiliation was pretty good, as far as holiday giving went.

Yeah, he reflected as Ahmed scurried off stage and was at his side in a moment. God fucking damn it, he was dizzy. Should probably lie down. But yeah, this would be a fun night to reflect on in the future when he was accused of being a Scrooge. Just remember, he would tell them. Just remember the night that Erik saved Christmas.


	46. Family

AN: Sorry about the long delay! Like I said in the deleted scenes, grad school happened and I've had major writer's block on this chapter, but here it is! Hopefully some of you are still out there waiting with baited breath and aren't TOO angry with me for being so late getting this nonsense uploaded!

* * *

_Take a little time,_  
_Just look at where we are._  
_We've come very, very far, together._  
_And if I might say so,_  
_And if I might say so too,_  
_We wouldn't have got anywhere_  
_If it weren't for you, boy._

_ Love is the sweetest thing._  
_ Love never comes just when you think it will._  
_ Love is the way we feel for you._  
_ We're family, we're family, we're family,_  
_ All of us and you!_

_-James and the Giant Peach_

Christmas break passed fairly ordinarily. At least Erik assumed so, he wound up spending the majority of it on his parents' couch. Like most individuals with ADHD tendencies, he found the perks of having microwaved pizza rolls brought to him while he watched episode after episode of _The Tyra Show_ to wear thin after about two days. Although he still couldn't qualify as rising to greet the day as a creature who was alive, awake, alert or enthusiastic, what he lacked in physical strength he more than made up for in vocal censure. Censure of his parents, of Christmas in general, of school breaks, of Freddy (since, regardless of what he said when he was half-intoxicated on uppers, he hadn't _quite_ forgiven him for being a douche), of Tyra Banks, eventually, and her evil empire of self.

Finally, his mother got fed up with it and told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he wanted to get out of the house, they could take definitely take a trip. To his therapist.

It was a sign of how desperate Erik was to leave his parental prison that he actually agreed. David the Therapist had an opening in the first week of January and told Maddy that he was so thrilled to "reconnect" with Erik after such a long absence.

It wasn't that David was malicious. It wasn't that David had any quirks of personal hygiene that made Erik want to avoid him like the plague. It was just that David, in Erik's opinion, was a really bad therapist. He didn't understand him and wasn't that the point of his job? To understand what was wrong with people and to fix it? Well, Erik had been going to him since high school and, as his most recent breakdown proved, wasn't anywhere close to fixed yet.

Nevertheless, he was slightly desperate at this point – though he would be _damned_ if he would admit that to anyone. When he was a high school student, he regarded therapy as a blip in his week that didn't have an adverse effect on his mental health, but didn't seem to make him better either. When he turned eighteen at the end of his senior year, Erik assumed he could just give it up and continue with his meds as usual, no loss either way.

Well, yeah fucking right.

So, that was how Erik found himself slouched down in a well-upholstered chair, staring moodily at a short fellow with curly hair and eyebrows that were about an inch farther apart than they really needed to be. When he got bored at an appointment, he used to stare at the space between David's eyebrows and imagine what short phrases could be tattooed there without crowding the words. Today he decided that David could use that space for advertising. '**GOT SANITY?**' in Arial font would probably work very nicely.

"So, Erik, to what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked pleasantly. That was another thing his client didn't appreciate, David's tendency to work his name into every sentence he uttered. As though Erik needed to be reminded of who he was. He wasn't _that_ far gone. "It's been a while, hasn't it, Erik?"

Was he trying to guilt him? Wasn't going to work. "I've been busy."

"So I've heard," David said – and was that something like _amusement_ in his voice? Erik's mental problems were not funny. Not to him and they shouldn't be for anyone else. "I saw your production of _Godspell_. It was very good, you must have worked very hard."

Erik frowned. Was that sarcasm? Because, from Erik's point of view, going to school for six hours and then spending another four at rehearsal seemed a damn sight more difficult than sitting in a chair for however long David sat in that fucking chair listening to people talk about themselves. Asshole.

"Yeah. It was a lot of work. We almost got shut down."

And then David frowned and Erik was certain that he was trying to look sympathetic when, really, it just made him look constipated. "That must have been difficult for you, Erik. Considering your relationship with Tim."

Erik's head snapped up so fast that he very nearly gave himself whiplash. "Well, _partially_. All of us felt bad for Tim. He hadn't done anything to be put in that position, it wasn't fair for the university to come down so hard on us."

David made a small, non-committal noise in the back of his throat. "Well Erik, I just meant, given your close relationship, surely it affected you more than most. Tim is something of a father-figure to you, Erik. In some ways."

Now Erik was actively glowering. Tim was 'something of a father-figure.' Well, if by father-figure, you meant that he partially fed, clothed, disciplined and nurtured be through my formative years and beyond, yeah. I guess you could say he's 'something of a father-figure.' If you want to be vague about it."

"And taking that into account, Erik, do you think that those added stressors contributed to your recent incident?" David straightened up then, pressing his hands together on his desk. That was a sign that he thought he was making a Significant Breakthrough. In Erik's experience, it meant David was preparing himself to talk out of his ass. "It must be difficult for you, Erik, since those whom you ought to be able to apply for support are often those who most require support from you. I notice it has been this way ever since I started treating you, when you were fifteen, and has been that way for quite some time. Erik, there was a great deal of confusion in your childhood, which manifests now in acknowledging four separate individuals as being parents to you. The fact that three of the four are male surely bewildered your young mind - "

"No, you stop, you fucking stop right there," Erik interrupted, holding up his hand to cease the barrage of words that were assaulting his already frayed mind. "You stop right there because that's not fair and it's not accurate. The way I was _raised_ has nothing to do with the way I _am. _Nothing, you understand? Some people are just born fucked, you know? And I was born fucked up. By the way, this whole gender-confusion being the root of all evil thing is getting kind of tired, and honestly? It's bullshit and you know it."

Both of David's short eyebrows raised over his round spectacles, but that was the only indication that he was an experiencing any kind of emotion. "Erik," he continued reasonably. "Erik. That is simply not true. All people come into this world a clean slate and you were affected by very difficult issues at such a young age. Additionally, your professed lack of interest in sexual intimacy - "

"What difficult issues?" he burst out passionately. "Yeah, no shit, my face fell off before I was a month old, that was pretty difficult, yeah, but the way I was raised has _nothing_ to do with that. Okay? Maddy and Charlie might be bad at being parents, but they are not bad parents."

Only one brow went up this time. "That would seem to be a contradiction, there, Erik."

Groaning loudly, Erik buried his face in his fingers, pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. Hard. "You would think that. You don't understand, you've _never _understood and you never wanted to. Okay? I mean that Charlie and Maddy aren't Mr and Mrs fucking Cleaver, okay? And that's _fine_ because I don't want them to be. They're selfish and immature and that suits me just fine because Chester and Tim? Should probably be nominated for parents of the year."

A sigh. "Erik. Erik, Erik, you speak of these four people interchangeably as your parents. Don't you think that perhaps that would indicate confusion?"

Erik only looked up from between his fingers to glare. "Don't get Socratic with me, I don't like it. And I'm not confused. Maddy and Charlie fucked each other and I was born. I'm made up of half their genetic material, fine, I get that, I'm cool with that. But you are a fucking liar if you try to say that Chester and Tim aren't my parents too, all four of them together."

Letting out a laugh that was more like a sob, Erik leaned back in the chair and delivered the rest of his remarks to the ceiling. "I'm the luckiest kid in the world. I've got four people looking out for me, who love me, would do anything for me and I keep fucking up."

"Erik. This is precisely what I mean," David pressed on, leaning across his desk now and staring at his patient through his glasses like he was trying to see into his soul or some equally tired metaphor. "Your guilt at what is an uncontrollable medical conditions, your periodic lapses in your self-care. Erik, do you possibly think that there is a link? That perhaps – just perhaps – you now seek the attention of a typical caregiver that you were denied as a child? That you use hospitals and such to substitute for the single-minded devotion of a typical parent?"

And that was it. Whatever benefit Erik might had derived from the session was completely nullified by the anger he felt building with himself for the tiny, _clueless_ man behind the desk.

"Do you think that I actually _like_ this?" Erik demanded, rising abruptly from his chair and nearly toppling that piece of furniture in the proess. "That I _enjoy_ this? That I like making Maddy cry? That I enjoy the fact that Charlie calls every goddamned _day_ when he's not in town to check up on me? You think I like everyone acting like I'm fragile or already broken? You think I _like_ not taking my medicine? Because I don't. I _should_ take it, I should _have_ taken it. I don't know why I didn't. I mean, I do, but it was stupid."

Erik was breathing heavily, clenching and unclenching his spindly fingers, thin lips set in a grim line of anger as he glared daggers at the bastard he was paying to make him feel like shit."I don't like myself very much, if you haven't noticed, you stupid piece of shit," he growled, going to the coat rack and grabbing his jacket. "No, I'm _not _okay with myself and guess what? You aren't helping! And it is your job, it is your fucking job to change that. You have to make me okay with myself. And if you can't do that, I'm getting a new therapist."

Without so much as a backward glance, he stalked out of the room, pulling his jacket on and ignoring the receptionist who was expecting him to make out a check for his co-pay. Fuck her. Fuck her and fuck the bastard she worked for, they weren't helping. Not one little bit. Erik made his way out into the sleet and chill of Providence's East Side. Cars were driving slowly, drivers uncharacteristically cautious to avoid slipping on a patch of black ice. There were very few pedestrians out on the street. Madeline had dropped him off only twenty-five minutes ago, Erik was supposed to call her when he wanted to be picked up.

Halfway though punching her number in on his speed dial, Erik decided he could do with a walk. And walk he did. Up the icy roads, past familiar coffee shops, bookstores and clothing outlets. Up the hills, past Thayer St. and all the way to the tall brick house with the small, but immaculately maintained front yard that he whiled away half his childhood in. All the while the rage in his chest tightened and solidified, the icy wind whipped at his face and made his eyes sting with tears, though he'd never felt less like crying.

Chester opened the door a scant two seconds after Erik knocked. "What's up, honeybee?" he asked, looking Erik up and down before pulling the half-frostbitten young man inside. The boy didn't reply, but Chester had not really been expecting an answer. It didn't take a genius to realize that kiddo was having a bad day.

Once he was dressed in a change of clothes and sitting on the living room couch with a cup of chocolate in his hands and an afghan around his shoulders, Erik looked Chester in the eyes and asked him, "You guys know I love you, right? Even though I never say it and I fuck up all the time and I'm basically the biggest cunt on the planet - "

Chester reached out and ruffled Erik's hair, perching on the arm of the sofa to put them more or less on the same level. "Oh, honey," he sighed, gesturing that Erik should drink his cocoa before it got cold. "I know that. You don't have to tell me. Family always knows that, kiddo."


	47. Food, Glorious Food

AN: Well, it's been a while. Grad school has been thoroughly kicking my butt, that is my only excuse. Hopefully there are a few out there who are still interested in this little piece of fluff. I'm probably going to give it a serious edit once I've written everything I want to write, but I figure I might as well put it all out there before going over it with a fine-tooth comb. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I own nothing, especially not the KCACTFs or the fine state of New Hampshire. Or McDonald's, come to that.

* * *

_Food, glorious food! _  
_Hot sausage and mustard! _  
_While we're in the mood - _  
_Cold jelly and custard! _  
_Pease pudding and saveloy! _  
_What next is the question? _  
_Rich gentlemen have it, boys - _  
_In-di-gestion!_

_-Oliver!  
_

There comes a time in the life of every American theatre major when attention must be paid to that grand dame of stage and screen, that beacon of dread and hope in the limelight: Granny Clampett. Yes, it was indeed that time of year when the Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival must be faced with aplomb, style and gallons upon gallons of alcohol.

Oh, you have never heard of the Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival? Perhaps you know it by its acronym, the KCACTF? No? What about just ACTF? It is also colloquially known as the Irene Ryan's. Still not ringing any bells? Settle in, grab a stiff drink. It's going to be a long week.

Christmastime was over, Erik was relatively stable, Raoul was sexually confused and all was as it ought to be in the world. St. Mary's BFA students were eagerly awaiting the coming of the new school year – mostly because they would only have to endure two days of real classes before they were whisked off on the road trip of the year. This road trip would consist of a three and a half hour journey into the wilds of New Hampshire to perform _Godspell_ on a rickety New Hampshire-style stage with New Hampshire-style lighting in front of an audience of their New England theatre peers.

The news came as quite a shock when Tim sent the email round that they would have to dust off their bell-bottoms, grease up their vocal chords and report to Memorial Rep for rehearsals beginning January 10th in order to be in tip-top shape for a performance on February 4th.

Um...what the fuck? Had been the general tenor of the responses. No one even knew they were in the _running_ for a competition spot. Tim usually didn't go for 'contests' as he called them. He thought them tacky...well, he _still_ thought they were tacky and only entered their production of _Godspell_ on a whim since a $25,000 grant was available to the school in the 'Musical Theatre' category that demonstrated, "superlative elements of costume, design, performance and vision in keeping with the goals and mission of the Kennedy Center American Theatre Festival." Honestly, he hadn't thought they'd be up for consideration and apparently they weren't – until the lead in Connecticut College's production of _The Rocky Horror Show_ broke his ankle and they had to drop out. St. Mary's was the last-minute replacement.

Fortunately for the kiddies, _Godspell_, though fun and funky, was hardly a complicated or easily-forgotten show, so they had it back up to a satisfactory performance level in the few short weeks of rehearsal that they had to prepare. Chester was easily the most stressed of everyone since it was his job to launder and repair all of the costumes that he'd hoped he'd never have to set eyes upon again. Those costumes were now comfortably lodged in the back of Ahmed's van along with the entire male portion of the show as they drove into the great unknown. Some were more excited than others.

"So, all the theatre schools in New England get together and perform and stuff?" Raoul asked, blue eyes shining. "That is so _cool_."

Freddy smiled indulgently into the rear view mirror. "Yeah, it's supposed to be really fun. There are workshops you can go to, for singing, dancing, breathing techniques - "

"Bullshit."

Freddy's gaze in the mirror turned disapproving. "Erik, if you don't stop being a Negative Nancy, I'm turning this car around and no ice cream for you."

"Freddy," Ahmed interrupted, giving him a shove from the passenger seat. "Keep your eyes on the road or _I'm_ turning the car around and you don't get to drive anymore."

Which, naturally, resulted in whining, "But _DAD!_ I wanna _DRIVE_! I've _ALWAYS _wanted to drive the rape van!"

"Wait, why is it bullshit?" Raoul asked, turning around in his seat completely to tilt his head questioningly at Erik. He looked rather like a cocker spaniel when he did so. It might have been endearing had Erik slept at all the night before and been in the mood for pleasantries.

With a great dramatic sigh, he draped himself over the back seat and stared at Raoul coolly, "Okay, first of all, people basically pay for admission to this farce, the workshops are utterly worthless since, seriously, how much insight can be granted to a group of 500+ students in a hotel room in forty-five minutes? And all of the 'original works' they promote? Some of the worst theatre you will ever see in your entire life – no, I'm not exaggerating."

Armand rolled his eyes and shoved Erik's feet off his lap. Figured he'd have to share bench space with the world's biggest drama queen with the world's longest, boniest legs. What he wouldn't give for a hearty dose of valium. "And you, of course, know this because you've spent all your Januaries at the Irene Ryans for _years_ now, right?"

"I went five years ago, Tim needed a light board operator and I wanted a week out of school. He said never again. I _heard_ him, I had to listen to him on the drive back from fucking_ Maine_, thank you very much, for seven hours talking about how bullshit this was and how he was never doing it again and now -"

"Now," Ahmed interrupted smoothly, "you're driving with us and we're all going to be far too hungover on the ride back to complain about anything other than light and how loud everyone's breathing is. Just chill, we're going to have a good time."

"How?" Erik asked miserably. "How are we going to have a good time?"

Ahmed smiled sagely, green eyes sparkling with mischief and illegal substances. "Two words. Four Loko."

Erik sprang up from the backseat, a look of awe on his face. "You beautiful man," he intoned reverently. "You beautiful, beautiful man. I could kiss you."

"Aren't you not supposed to - " Raoul began, but Armand cut him off, impatiently.

"So, ever since Freddy mentioned ice cream, I've been hungry. Can we pull over and get something to eat?"

"...pull over where?" Freddy asked, glancing from side to side. Farmland and ominous mountains dotted the horizon. "Are we going to kill a squirrel and nom its insides like that survivor-guy? Because I read on Wikipedia that he's full of crap."

"Um, ew, no, thanks for the visual though. There's a rest stop in a bit, they have a McDonald's. Is everyone okay with McDonald's?"

Being teenage boys without the most discerning palates, the young gentlemen agreed that McDonald's would be a perfectly satisfactory lunching place. There was just one problem.

"Does anyone have any cash?"

It was Ahmed's query, but it gave them all pause. In our Dolby Digital, get-it-done-yesterday world of plastic and paypal accounts, it was easy to forget that there were some places on this great blue (swiftly browning) planet that did not accept credit cards. There was no way guarantee that a rest stop in the wilds of New Hampshire would. There was no way of knowing whether or not plastic was even in wide-spread use in the wilds of New Hampshire.

A general consensus was quickly reached that it would be best just to use good, old fashioned money and pray that they didn't operate under a barter system. Two coonskin caps for a McDouble with cheese. Just as quickly, all of the boys realized that none of them had any cash money to speak of.

"I have...eighty cents," Armand concluded at last, having gone through his pockets twice over. "And a paperclip." There was also a nickel that appeared to be stuck fast to one of the cup holders in the front seat. It might be difficult to prise up, but desperate times sometimes brought out latent, adrenaline-fueled strength in mothers whose children were trapped under cars. It would probably work the same way for hungry college kids with a burger craving.

"Sweet," Freddy muttered absently. "So we're up to eighty-five cents."

"Eighty-seven!" Raoul shouted triumphantly, a wide grin splitting his face in two. "I found two pennies under the seat!" At first, Raoul had not seen the appeal of running his fingers between the crack in the seats, various crunchy somethings getting stuck under his fingernails, looking for loose bits of change. As soon as he felt the satisfaction of grasping those two tarnished coins, he redoubled his efforts with greater concentration.

Ahmed and Erik managed to come up with a dollar a piece and, in a stroke of genius, Freddy parked the van while he, with ninja-like stealth, crept to the drive through window to scavenge the ground for dropped coins. When he returned, they found themselves with $4.23 cents to their name. It didn't quite vanquish their hunger issues, as Christine learned when she texted from the girls' car to ask if the guys wanted to grab dinner once they were settled at the hotel.

**Oh, yeah!** Was his enthusiastic response. **We've only had a big mac all day.**

_**wait...u guys just ordered 1 big mac?**_

**Yeah. We all took turns taking bites from it...is that gay?**

_**...a little.**_


	48. What You Own, Prt 1

AN: Thanks for the reviews! It's nice to know from that (and the stats) that there are still some interested parties plodding along. This is part one of...probably three parts. This was either going to be a HUGE chapter, or three little ones, I thought I'd spare you from plodding through screen after screen of text.

Disclaimer: So, although the situations discussed here and in the next few chapters are based on real-life experiences, none of the characters are based on real people and Foster Templeton is not based on any particular school. Again, I own nothing, not the school, Applebee's or Ben and Jerry's.

* * *

_Don't breathe too deep_  
_ Don't think all day_  
_ Dive into work_  
_ Drive the other way_  
_ That drip of hurt_  
_ That pint of shame_  
_ Goes away_  
_ Just play the game_

_ You're living in America_  
_ At the end of the millenium_

_ You're living in America_  
_ Leave your conscience at the tone_  
_ And when you're living in America_  
_ At the end of the millenium_  
_ You're what you own_

_-What You Own, RENT_

After an uneventful check-in, the kids were settled in to their rooms – two rooms, divided by sex to be exact. Two rooms with two queen-sized beds for ten more or less full grown young adults. Though the rooms at the Hampton Inn they settled at were spacious, air mattresses had been purchased and sleeping bags dutifully taken along, the kids still felt they were going to be roughing it for the weekend. The hotel was just as sterile and boring as might be expected from a Hampton Inn, which was actually quite a shock to a group that had been expecting to fend off a rogue moose that would inevitably meander into the log cabin they would be forced to inhabit. The hotel was actually kind of a let-down.

"I was expecting _Blair Witch_ and I got _The Shining_," Ahmed grumbled as they reconstructed their set for the next evening's performance. They were to take the stage after a group from Foster Templeton University performed an original work. Luckily, their set could be constructed and stored in the wings, since it was nothing more impressive than a short flight of steps that led to nowhere, some columns painted to resemble telephone poles and a fence. Everything was on castors for easy mobility and no one was breaking a sweat during assemblage.

"Maybe we'll run into some kind of undead bartender," Freddy shrugged, adjusting the setting of the screw gun he was wielding. "That could be fun."

Chester, who had come along as both chaperon and sound board operator, gave Freddy a dark look. "I'm sorry, did I just hear someone say 'bar'? Because I thought I heard someone say 'bar,' and we are _not _hauling this nonsense back down half the eastern seaboard after we just got done hauling it up here."

What Chester was referring to was, of course, the standard ACTF rule about alcohol – mainly, that it was not available to anyone involved with the competition with the exception of over-worked, over-twenty one members of the college faculty and _only_ in the bar of the hotel. If any representative of any school affiliated with the ACTF was found with any quantity of alcohol on their persons or in their rooms at any time during the festival, their school would be disqualified, sent home and barred from participation for two years following the incident. Which was why the cans of Four Loko had been dumped into empty Coke bottles at the earliest opportunity. It seemed like cruel and unusual punishment to Sorelli, who mentioned the fact at every opportunity. Three, two one...

"This is cruel and unusual punishment," Sorelli groused, repainting sections of the columns that had gotten scuffed in transit.

Charlotte rolled her eyes. "You do remember that you're under twenty-one, right? Like, that you aren't allowed to drink even when we're not here, right?"

"Well, I mean, come on. This is, like, the safest place we could drink! We're in a freaking hotel and we only have, like, three cars and I can't drive any of them. It's not like we'll kill someone!"

"Sarah," Chester asked, cocking his head curiously at her, "is there some part of 'illegal' that you don't understand? I mean it kids, no boozing, no huffing, no sniffing, no smoking, no shooting - "

Christine's head perked up in alarm, "Shooting? People brought guns?"

Meg pet her head sweetly, "He means drugs, honey."

"They might have brought guns," Armand speculated. "This is New Hampshire."

"Aren't there a lot of hippies here?" Jamie's expectations of New Hampshire had been wildly different from the rest of the group's. While the majority of her classmates were expecting hairy backwoodsmen, deer carcasses and bloodthirsty rednecks who operated on a barter system, Jamie's head had been filled with images of prancing animals and picturesque mountains, populated by an aging populace who made pies and went fishing at the creek. "I thought there were a lot of hippies here. Aren't the ice cream guys from here?"

Charlotte thought it best to let her down easy. "That's Vermont, sweetie."

"Aren't they practically the same place?"

"Not since, like, eighteen hundred," Armand said, declining to mention that Vermont became its own state in 1791, since there was no reason that he should have known that, outside of the fact that he was a U.S. History geek and that wasn't something that needed to be advertised. Like, ever.

"Well, shit," she sulked. "I wanted ice cream."

Chester was just about the console the pouting semi-adult that though New Hampshire might not be the birthplace of Ben and Jerry's, they could probably get a pint at the local mini-mart when he was cut off mid-thought by a commanding voice from somewhere out in the house.

"Excuse me! Excuse me! We have this space! We were _told_ we had this space to rehearse."

Chester blinked out toward the tech booth where Erik, Slade and Tim were testing out the equipment they would be using (since not all college theatres were alike) and shrugged as if to say, 'Come on down here and handle this, someone, since I'm only the help. I don't know nothin' 'bout organizin' no rehearsal schedule.'

Unfortunately, despite the years and love between them, Tim could not interpret his partner's body language for the mayday it was and Chester had to deal, at least temporarily with the gaggle of students and faculty that mounted the stage, stepping over and around his students in their haste.

"Excuse me, hi, but I have use of this stage from four o'clock through," said a harried looking woman, clutching an ACTF schedule of events in her hands. "I booked it, I have it."

Wondering if he'd lost track of time, Chester glanced at his watch, then back to...well, whoever this woman was. "Okay, well, it's only four-thirty," he said reasonably. "We'll be out by five. I'm Chester Goldman from St. Mary's in Rhode Island - "

"It's four-thirty-seven," a tall, thin, balding, unfortunately goateed man groused. "I'm sorry, I'm sure you didn't know, but we really need this space - "

"At five," Chester said smoothly, not being so concerned with manners that he wouldn't trump one interruption with another. "We're just finishing up now, we'll be out in twenty minutes – sorry, I didn't catch the name." Well, they _would_ be out in twenty minutes if the kids just carried on with their business and didn't stare while the grown-ups had it out.

"Finkel. Jerry Finkel, sorry, it's been a long day," the goatee said with a bit of a forced smile, extending his hand for Chester to take. "This place is unbelievable. We requested seven rooms, we got six, the hotel's run out of cots, our properties van took a wrong exit and was delayed an hour and _two_ of our competitors have performed already today."

Chester shook his head sympathetically. And really, why not be sympathetic? It was a pain in the ass trying to organize a group of theatre people to do anything in a timely manner, even without taking into account wrong turns and missing cots. "That's a shame. Where are you coming from?"

"New Jersey," the woman said, also extending a hand to shake. "I'm Laurie Fisher, we're from Foster Templeton."

"Oh," Chester said, realization lifting the clouds from his vision at last. Like a Claritin commercial. "You guys are performing tonight. Well, sure, we'll be out of your hair. Is there anyplace you'd prefer we store our set?"

Jerry Finkel frowned and looked at the St. Mary's younglings underfoot who immediately went back to work with a renewed, self-conscious effort. "Hmm. I'm not sure. What do you think, Dom?" he asked, addressing a tall, spotty young man in skinny jeans and Elvis Costello glasses that Chester would bet money he didn't have a prescription for.

"Hmm," the aforementioned Dom said in a conscious imitation of his mentor. "I don't know. Our set is so...fluid. I suppose...I don't know, is there an out of the way storage space of some kind?"

Chester glanced about him, "Oh God, no idea, we were just told to put our things in the wings - "

"Oh, dear, no, that won't work," Dom tutted, shaking his head. "No, no, we need that space. Our show...well, you'll see tonight, I suppose, but the actors have to be very...in the moment. I don't want them to have to worry about tripping over barbed wire or somesuch. It will definitely remove them from the scene and it's too terribly difficult to pick something like that up again once you've dropped the energy. Do you see what I mean, surely you do."

It took talent to take a question and then turn it into a statement, but Chester was not unduly impressed by the little shit's attitude. He did not like it one bit, but he was an adult and Dom (even though he seemed to be the director) was only on the cusp of adulthood, so he had to be the bigger person and -

"Have you seen the wings? There's enough room for an aircraft carrier back there."

Oh great fucking god of damnation, why did _Erik_ have to be the one to come down from the booth? (In fact, because he'd turned to Tim thirty seconds earlier and said, "Do you see those people? Do you think they're giving Chester a hard time? I think they're giving Chester a hard time. I'll tell them off, I don't mind being a bitch to people," and was off before Tim could tackle him to the floor.

Dom fairly sneered, but on his still-adolescent face, it merely looked like he was going to sneeze. "Ours is a very large cast and the show has been extensively choreographed. I really need them to _inhabit_ that space, I'm sure you'll understand."

Nope, Erik did not understand anything beyond the fact that this kid was an offensive prick who'd probably applied to NYU, failed to get in and brought his douchebaggery south to the Garden State with a hoity-toity, 'Well who'd _want_ to live in the city, anyway?' attitude. Weren't his handlers going to step in?

"Is there a workshop area you could store your set pieces in?" Ms. Fischer asked anxiously. "You don't seem to have very many and ours _is_ a rather...grand set."

_And ours can afford to get covered in sawdust,_ Chester thought grimly. Erik looked ready to start in on her, but luckily Tim arrived at that moment to sort things out. He had a semi-apologetic way of talking to people that usually managed to get him exactly what he wanted and this case was no exception. St. Mary's stored their set pieces in the wings as was planned, though Dom instructed that they, "Keep well away of the fly ropes," leaving both Reyer and Goldman to wonder whether he learned to talk from watching Merchant Ivory films.

"So, what show are you guys doing?" Christine brightly inquired of a Foster Templeton girl with cropped red hair who was watching her drag part of the fence off-stage.

"It's a new production, you wouldn't have heard of it," the young lady replied, looking bored. "Dominic wrote and directed it – he's brilliant and Jerry wrote the music and Laurie choreographed. We were lucky to get her, she's an alum who just finished working on a production off-Broadway, we were so grateful for her expertise."

"It's a musical?" Christine asked. "That's so cool that he wrote a musical. We're doing one too, but, um, well, we didn't write it or anything. And it's not new. Well, I mean, we tried to do some new stuff with it, it's kind of a blend of...styles. A little." Suddenly it didn't seem like _Godspell_ was all that cutting-edge next to some unknown Broadway-choreographied, student-directed new show.

"Oh?" the girl asked, sounding bored as ever. "Well, what are you putting on? I couldn't tell from your paraphernalia. I thought it might be _RENT_, but how cliché."

Christine thought now would not be a good time to mention that _RENT_ was one of her favorites. About two minutes after she mentioned that _RENT _was one of her favorites. "Oh my god, no, but how cool would that be? I love_ RENT_."

"To love it is fine, to live it divine," the redhead remarked cryptically.

"Uh, yeah, sure," Christine nodded. "Um, but no, we're doing _Godspell_, we did it before in the fall and people really seemed to like it. We almost got shut down."

If she'd meant to make their show sound more badass than it was (which, to be honest, she had), it was clear that she'd fallen well short of that intended goal. The Foster T girl just pulled a face like Christine said they were staging a live re-enactment of Two Girls, One Cup. "Oh, _Godspell? _Are you one of those...Christian schools?"

"...kinda," Christine said weakly. "Well, technically, we're more affiliated with, um, the-the repertory company than the school, but St. Mary's is, um, Catholic."

"Sorry, no, I just...no," the girl backed away as though Christine just informed her that she had leprosy. "Do you even...the _injustices_ perpetuated by the Catholic Church just appall me. You do realize that they consider women second class citizens? That Catholic hospitals _force_ women to give birth against their wills? Listen, from one sister to another, _never_ go to a Catholic hospital, there's some scary shit going on there. Did your parents make you go to that school?"

"Um...no," Christine said, briefly thinking she could pull out the old, 'My mom's dead line,' but that would doubtless lead to more conversations about Catholic hospitals. "I...the theatre program is really good and, honestly, we're not affiliated with the school so much as we are with the repertory theatre that runs our program and - "

"Hey." Raoul. Never had she been more thrilled to see him in her entire life. "We're leaving, there's an Applebee's nearby, can you believe it? I mean, it's a chain, so yeah, there would be one, but we're going to dinner, are you coming?"

"Yes!" Christine exclaimed, taking her friend by the arm, practically dragging him way from the scene of the awkward social interaction. "Yes! I love Applebee's! I'm starving, do you like spinach-artichoke dip? Because I love it and I think we should get some. It was nice meeting you," she called over her shoulder to the girl she'd been speaking with. "Break a leg tonight!"


	49. What You Own, Prt 2

AN: Parts 2 and 3 ready for reading. They're a little choppy, but that's pretty much in keeping with the general flow of this story thus far ;-) Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Again, I own nothing. _Burn_ is based on one of the worst theatre experiences of my life, that turned into an amusing anecdote. Out of bad theatre comes good jokes.

* * *

_Just tighten those shoulders.  
Just clench your jaw 'til you frown.  
Just don't let go  
Or you may drown._

_-RENT  
_

Once the children were all fed and watered, they returned to the scene of the crime to watch the show that had boosted them from the auditorium earlier. Christine was sitting between Raoul and Erik, being deeply uncomfortable because Erik kept elbowing her as he tried to arrange his legs for maximum comfort. He got her in the boob more than once. It was awkward.

"God, it's like they imported these seats from a cheap airline," he grumbled, finally settling down and snatching Christine's program from her hands. "So, what's this _fluid _show about anyway?"

"I have no idea, but apparently it is called _Burn,_" Christine answered honestly. In the interest of discovering just what sort of original production they were in for, she had been scouring the program for a summary or director's note, but there was none to be had, no hint of what the plot had in store for them beyond the title. So she started reading cast bios instead, but they were never very interesting, all variations on, 'Suzie would like to thank her family for always encouraging her dreams and watering the bud of her talent until it blossomed into a beautiful rose,' with the occasional quote thrown in.

Likewise, Erik didn't seem very impressed. He was frowning, but that might have been because his knees were digging into the seat in front of him. "Huh. Montag. That's so familiar. Where have I seen that before?"

"You just read it, hun," Chester supplied, taking a sip from a Coke bottle he was sharing with Tim. The students suspected there might be a little something extra in there, but they weren't going to ask and neither of their teachers would tell.

"Ha, cute, no," Erik rolled his eyes. "I've definitely heard it before. _Montag_. Fuck, this is going to bother me."

"Heidi Montag?" Jamie shrugged.

"No...shit. What the fuck? Montag. Like..._Montag._ Does that ring a bell for anyone else or am I crazy?"

"Well, you are crazy, but there's the dude from _Fahrenheit 451_," Ahmed said. "Guy Montag. He's the main character. The fireman. And that girl Clarisse – oh, hey, there's a Clarisse in here too. Clarisse...McClellan, was that her name in the book?"

"I don't know," Erik replied, handing Christine's program back to her. "I haven't read it in, legit, five years. Holy shit, do you think this is a play based on _Fahrenheit 451_? That's kind of sick. Like, kind of awesome. I hope they set stuff on fire, that would be badass."

"No, that would just be bad. You're confused," Charlotte said, frowning at the program and looking up for a sign of overhead sprinklers.

"The movie was _awful_," Armand remarked from further down the row. "And _long_, I hope this isn't a play based on that."

"It might not suck if it was based on the book, not the movie, the book was freaking _awesome_," Erik corrected. "Am I right?" He nudged Ahmed for support, but Ahmed was looking at the program intently, his mouth set in a line of puzzlement.

"Is this what I think it is?" he asked Erik, gesturing down toward his program. "Why are these things in italics?" The 'things' Ahmed was referring to where names and sentence fragments, like "When You're a Man," "All You See is TV" and "Mechanical Hound."

Erik stared at the program for a full minute, the cogs in his mind whirling. Almost twice he responded before realizing what he was thinking was impossible. Surely. It must be. Because whenever random sentence fragments were italicized normally in a script, that would indicate that it was a song that was to be performed at some point in the show. Clearly, that was not the case here, it couldn't possibly be so. Because, if the slanted words in the script indicated the presence of song, that would mean that Foster Templeton had managed to turn a classic of both American literature and the sci-fi genre into a musical. A _Fahrenheit 451_ musical. And that simply could not be. It was inconceivable.

And yet.

The curtain rose and twelve mouths dropped open as twenty-five college students ran on stage and began performing what appeared to be a highly choreographed version of The Robot in pseudo-mechanical voices, singing of their love for what they could watch on TV. Just in case an audience member missed the point, whenever the letters 'TV' appeared in the song in unison, the ensemble would form the letters with their hands, as though trying to communicate with sign language and not quite knowing how.

It only got worse from there. The costumes looked like a cross between the worst school uniforms one could imagine and the outfits from _Star Trek: The Original Series_, recreated on a budget of about twenty dollars. The "fluid" set that had been boasted of earlier consisted entirely of enormous beige shapes – blocks, circles, triangles that looked like they'd been lifted from the _Zoom_ some twenty years earlier and set down at the small college theatre by accident. Montag was played by one of the most Aryan-looking people the St. Mary's crew had ever seen (clearly, he'd gotten the part because he looked like Hitler's wet dream because the boy could neither sing, nor dance, nor act).

It was eventually clear that there had been a serious shortage of male talent at Foster since the young woman Christine had been chatting with appeared on stage in a tan skirt and thigh-high boots as Captain Beatty. Now, they could all understand the necessity of a good gender-switch in characters, but despite his commanding officer's heels and micro-mini, Montag referred to his captain as 'sir' and the actress proceeded to sing a rousing song about the merits of fascism, which included the line, "Once I was a boy, now I am a man." It was thoroughly confusing.

There was no intermission. No escape from the cloying horror and unceasing, cringe-worthy performances given by those on stage. Their cheesy dance moves, their wooden acting and absurd moments of dialogue (Montag delivered a memorable, Vader-esque, "NOOOOOO!" of disbelief at another character's death) were not punctuated by a moment of reprieve where audience members could sit back, take a breath and ask one another, "What the fuck is happening?"

As it was, they all sat back, too stunned to even look at one another, afraid that they had suddenly gone mad. It was too terrible to contemplate the notion that one of them might see an easy comfort or even _pleasure_ in the faces of their comrades. It was hard to imagine that something so awful could have made it to the stage and far easier to just assume that _they _were the only one seeing the spectacle before them. That everybody else was sitting through a perfectly respectable production of _West Side Story_ and that the combined forces of mountain air and sleep deprivation were working to create the bastard child of theatre and literature that was _Burn_.

This illusion was shattered irreparably when the climax of the show reared it's head. The heart-pounding, synthesizer-enhanced show-show stopper: "Mechanical Hound." The music had all the intellectual merit of a _Barney the Dinosaur_ singalong song, the lyrics were basically the words "mechanical hound" repeated over and over and was punctuated here and there by high-pitched computer generated dog howls while the cast ran around the stage, putting their hands in front of their chests like paws and hand-jiving.

That was when Erik lost it. Utterly lost it. It started with a titter, a chuckle, a wheeze. A high-pitched, slightly hysterical giggle that could have been choked and forgotten, passed off as a sneeze. Yet when Erik let out that first ill-fated guffaw, Ahmed reached out compulsively and squeezed his hand. Erik looked to his left and locked eyes with his friend. Instant connection, that beautiful, awful moment when the two realized, _He's seeing this too. I'm not crazy. This is really happening._ For a moment they were silent, biting their lips, caught in the Giggle Loop, but it was not to last. Neither of them could take it any longer, the tension they had been carrying with them for the past hour burst forth in an uncontrollable bout of laughter.

The rest were soon to follow. Freddy went first, followed by Meg, followed by Jamie and so on and so on until even Chester and Tim were covering their mouths and biting the insides of their cheeks. It was _ just that bad_. Whatever sympathy they might have for what was probably a chronically under-funded theatre program at a fellow liberal arts college flew out the window. Any theatrical camaraderie no longer mattered when a fellow thespian took part in something so grostesquely awful that it defied any known limit of parody, satire or pantomime. It was pretentious, cheap and utterly lacking in soul or thought. This was not so bad it was good. This was just _terrible_.

Every single person in that auditorium, whether they could admit it to themselves or not, could think of a hundred other things they could be doing with their time that would be a more valuable and having oral surgery was not at the bottom of the list for many. The laughter quickly spread until the walls of the theatre were ringing with it. The performers were undaunted, though a few broke character enough to look surprised. The audience took no notice. They were too busy laughing at the absurdity of the show, at the absurdity of the week at the absurdity of their place in the world that anything happening on stage ceased to matter.

The laughter continued long after the song was over and the cast transitioned awkwardly into the last scene, effectively cutting out half the novel and losing everything in translation. There was only scattered applause at the end of the show, audience members began to disperse rather quickly and the St. Mary's gang were not slow in getting the hell out of that theatre.

"I am offended," Erik said, grimly and his sentiments were shared by all. Though they had laughed and laughed uproariously, every single member of the St. Mary's company felt as though their time had been wasted, their intelligence insulted and their art bastardized. If not quite in those terms.

"Aren't they...embarrassed?" Sorelli asked. "That was...crap. They must have known it was crap, no one could read that script and sing those songs and do those dance moves without knowing it was crap."

"Was it...I don't know, was it supposed to be satire?" Armand offered weakly. "Maybe it was supposed to be satire."

"Oh, honey, no," Chester said, staring at the _Zoom_ set. The tone of voice was precisely the one parents use to explain to kids that Santa isn't real. "No. They...no. They really thought they were doing a good job. And that's sad."

"It wasn't..." Raoul attempted, closing his mouth when he couldn't think of one positive comment. "I mean they..." He licked his lips and gave it the old college try once more, "The costumes...I mean it's cool that that guy wrote...um. Yeah."

"I can't believe we spent money to come here," Tim was muttering as he pinched the bridge of his nose and held the door open so that he could evacuate his students as quickly as possible. "I would like to apologize to all of you for making you come here."

The conversation continued as the groups piled into their cars. Christine wound up going back to the hotel in Herbie the Love Bus with Ahmed, Freddy, Erik, Meg and Jamie since the others wanted to get dinner and Tim and Chester wanted to disappear into a bar for a few hours. The bus crew just wanted to order some pizzas and continue bitching about the show.

"I can't even feel bad about making fun of them," Christine interjected, feeling the urge to say something compassionate. This was as close as she got. "I'm not saying I have great taste. I mean, I love _Grease_. I love _Wicked_. I've seen some bad theatre, I've seen awful, _awful _Shakespeare shows done in community theatres with whole bunch of Americas faking English accents. This was just...so beyond. Why? Why was it so bad?"

"Because they thought it was fucking amazing," Ahmed said. "I bet they think that show is going to set the world on fire. They think they have the best show since _RENT_ and _Spring Awakening _and _In the Heights_. Combined."

Meg was skeptical. "No. They can't. It's so fucking bad. _So_ bad. You heard Sorelli, how could you put on a show like that and think it's good? You can't. You have to be _completely_ delusional."

"They are!" Freddy exclaimed. "They so are! You heard them today, talking about how they needed _space_ and they're _in the moment_. They think this is great! They think they are amazing. They think they are the best fucking actors in the world and maybe they are since, obviously, they're fucking crazy and think they're all these things they aren't which is basically all you need to be a good actor - "

"I am so pissed," Erik interrupted from the front passenger seat. "_So_ pissed." This was the first he'd spoken since announcing that the production was offensive to him.

"Aw, don't be pissed," Jamie advised. "I mean, come on, it's a little funny, isn't it? It'll probably be way funny tomorrow. I mean, it sucks that we wasted two hours of our lives on it, but it was hilariously bad."

Erik just shook his head. Obviously whatever buzz he'd been floating on had worn off once the first synthesized note had been produced. "It's the principle of the thing, Jamie. The _principle_. They have no _right_ to be that bad. Do you realize they probably charged people to watch that miserable abomination of shit? I hate that, I fucking _hate_ that. People charge ridiculous prices for terrible theatre, they reject good shows and good concepts in favor of avante-garde _crap_."

"That's not fair, not everything that's new and different is crap," Meg argued. "This was, I admit, this was a shit show, this was easily the worst play I have ever seen, but that doesn't mean that everything new is bad."

"I never said that," Erik shot back. "No, there is a lot of quality work out there and you know what fucking pisses me off? That we didn't see good work tonight. And we _could have_ because it is _out_ _there_. But no. You know why? Because anything that's really edgy or good, or different gets pushed to the side and discarded and blown off and that makes me so fucking angry. Because that? News flash: NOT NEW. Not even fucking original, they rip off a masterpiece, butcher it and add some shitty musical numbers that sounded like the fucking _Tron_ soundtrack and think that they're saving the theatre when these are the fuckers who are _murdering_ it. Honestly, you know what they could have done instead? They could have just gotten a copy of _Fahrenheit 451 _from Borders, taken it on stage and had the cast take turns shitting all over it because that is _exactly_ what they did tonight. _Exactly_."

Ahmed turned the music up so that he could drown out Erik's ranting. Impromptu singalongs were probably the best way to banish universal bad feelings. It was impossible not to enjoy onseself when you were in a van belting out "Total Eclipse of the Heart," complete with interpretive hand dancing.

It was in high spirits that they returned to the hotel – and it was in low spirits when they realized that they had pulled in right beside a car which contained four of the Foster Templetons who were just exiting their vehicle, including the bitchy student director.


	50. What You Own, Prt 3

AN: Part 3 of this chapter arc! If you came here before reading Part 2, I recommend you hit the little back arrow because if you don't, nothing that follows will make any kind of sense. And this story makes as little sense as humanly possible.

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine! Nothing!

* * *

_Dying in America  
At the end of the millennium.  
We're dying in America  
To come into our own.  
And when you're dying in America  
At the end of the millennium  
You're not alone._

_-RENT  
_

"Do _not _get out of the van," Meg said, putting a restraining hand on Erik's arm. "I am dead serious, you do _not_ leave this car and when you eventually do leave this car, you do _not _say anything to them."

"Can _I _say something to them?" Freddy asked, one hand on the door handle. "Because someone needs to say something to them."

"Really?" Christine asked slightly desperately. "_Does_ someone? Because they're not going to care. Like, you're just going to insult them and they're going to get mad and you're going to get mad. No good will come of this. Let's just stay in the car - "

A knock on the window threw out the notion of not interacting with the other group of students. The hand the knocked belonged to the Hitler Youth looking kind who'd played Montag that evening.

"Really?" Meg asked, dumbfounded that the universe could so conspire against her good sense. "Really? This is seriously happening?"

Erik rolled down the window and glared at the Montag actor. "Yeah?" he asked gruffly. It was an unprecedented display of civility for him. Christine made a mental note to send a fruit basket to his psychiatrist.

"Sorry, um, you guys are parked kind of crooked, could you straighten your van out?"

Not inclined to do anything they requested, since clearly the Foster Templetons lacked good judgment, Ahmed looked the the rearview mirror and frowned. "You have plenty of room, it's fine." He was in the lines anyway, who cared if the car wasn't perfectly straight?

"Well, I don't want to worry about scratching my car," Montag said, losing some of his polite tone. Earlier, Erik had thought earlier that he bore a slight resemblance to Raoul, being all blonde hair and white teeth, but any similarities were rapidly diminishing as his tone became more demanding. At the end of the day, Raoul was a people-pleaser. This guy was clearly not. "We're going back for an evaluation early in the morning and it's icy, so could you maybe park somewhere else? Come on, it'll take like, a minute."

"Um, fuck you, we're not going anywhere," Erik said, opening his door and shoving Montag back into his car in the process. Christine stopped mentally writing thank-you notes. "And between you and me, I don't think any evaluation is going to save your show."

"Excuse me? Who the fuck are you? No – move your car, man, I'm serious," Montag said, shouting around Erik to Ahmed who was just getting out of the car.

The bitchy director had head the scuffle and came walking over at a quick clip. "Alright, Brandon, just leave it, I'm sure we'll back out no problem, let's just go back to our rooms."

The others scrambled out of the car just in time to see Erik smirk as he said, "Right, you'll want to be all bright eyed and bushy-tailed for your dressing-down tomorrow."

Behind his birth control lenses, the director narrowed his eyes at Erik. "Right. Because I'm going to listen to a critique about _my_ show from _you._ Honestly, _Godspell_? Whatever flaws exist in our production, at least we're trying to do something original. I stage managed _Godspell_ when I was in the fifth grade."

Erik looked nonplussed, "And I'm sure that production was terrible too."

"Okay!" Ahmed shouted, a little too loudly. "And, we're leaving. Come on, dude, let it go."

"No," Erik said, shrugging Ahmed's hand off. "I'm sorry, someone needs to tell them the truth - "

"And it doesn't need to be you," Meg said, coming up on Erik's other side. It might be a little ridiculous to contemplate, a girl who was five-foot-nothing and one hundred pounds soaking wet trying to physically restrain a guy when her head just about came up to his nipples, but adrenaline helped mothers lift cars off of babies, it might give her a fighting chance. "Seriously, you need to figure out the difference between trying to help and just being a shit-stirrer."

Montag-Brandon smirked and said, "That's right. All talk, why don't you go run off back to your room, like good little kids."

Though he had left the car to give Ahmed and Meg some extra manpower, Freddy folded his arms and glared at the other boy in ill-concealed disgust. "Wow, really? And how old are you? Nineteen? Twenty? Gasp, _twenty-one?_ Forgive us if we don't bow down to your demands, oh most high."

Montag-Brandon responded to that as well as could be expected. "Shut the fuck up, cocksucker."

"Fuck _you!_" Erik shouted and probably would have charged the guy if Ahmed didn't have a firm hold on him. Luckily, he had back-up.

"Hey!" Christine might be more of a lover than a fighter, but she was always ready to throw caution to the wind and jump into the fray when gay slurs were being thrown around. She did almost make out with Meg that one time. "Who the hell do you think you are? You have _no_ right to say things like that to _anyone_."

"Thanks for defending my honor, babe, but it's all wishful thinking," Freddy countered, his hands curling into fists at his sides. "Montag here would probably _kill_ for a good blow job, but unfortunately for him, I have standards." Montag-Brandon colored darkly at that, but surprisingly didn't say anything.

"Fuck yeah you do," Jamie added, finally closing the unified front of Bad Ideas. "And speaking of sucking, your show sucked donkey dicks. Personally, I think it's better to do an old show well than a new show horribly. "

"Oh, get a grip," an FT girl scoffed. "Just because you didn't _like _our show, doesn't mean you can criticize it. So, why don't you just keep your opinions to yourself unless we ask for them – which we didn't, by the way, so just jog on, assholes." She made a little 'shooing' gesture with her hands for added indignity.

"Come _on_ guys," Ahmed said, forgetting his task of restraining Erik and throwing his hands in the air in exasperation. "Let's just go. They're fucking idiots, we realized that when we watched their piece of shit show, so let's just go back to our room and ignore them. It's not worth it. _Clearly._"

Jamie tossed her hair and flipped the FT group off before dramatically floucing toward the hotel entrance. The rest of the St. Mary's gang followed her, Meg and Freddy frog-marching Erik away from the other students who were slowly dispersing. Erik threw them an evil glare over his shoulder, but they had their backs to them and didn't see it. Once they arrived in the warmth of the hotel lobby, tempers cooled and after a few minutes of swearing and vague threats, Freddy decided to just forget it and call for pizzas.

"Everyone gets cranky on an empty stomach," he muttered, as if that would excuse the behavior in the parking lot. Erik volunteered to wait for the pizza delivery guy to come, since, in his own words, it was sort of his fault that they got into that argument to begin with. It was a very mature reaction to the situation and his classmates were impressed that he was so willing to make it up to him so quickly.

That should have been the first sign of trouble.

At least one person had an inkling in that direction. "Could you stay here with him?" Ahmed asked Christine as they began to meander toward the elevators. "You kind of mellow him out."

She agreed since, really, it was a lonely fate to wait for the pizza delivery guy alone and Erik entertained her by playing "Viva La Vida" on the hotel piano. It probably wasn't technically allowed, but he was really good, so no one on the staff came over to yell at them. Christine was squeezed pretty close next to him on the piano bench, but it was all good. Erik was acting sweet and playing a great song, it was dark outside and they had a good view of the parking lot so they'd see the minute the delivery car pulled up outside -

And they had the perfect view to watch one of students they'd so recently been fighting with throw a rock through Ahmed's back windshield.

Erik was on his feet and out the door in a flash and Christine was sprinting to keep up with him. She missed whatever he shouted that made the Foster Templetons stop their retreat from the scene of the crime. Though she hadn't seen the culprit, Erik evidently thought it was Montag-Brandon because he got right in the other guy's face and pushed him in the chest with both hands, knocking him into a nearby car hard enough to set off its security alarm.

Montag-Brandon recovered quickly and came up swinging. The FTs cheered their friend on, but Christine – who had never witnessed a real fight before in her _life_ – looked on with her mouth hanging open. Her mind was whirling, should she call Ahmed, should she try and drag Erik away herself, should she scream, should she just run inside and get hotel security? What was the protocol here? All she really wanted to do was cry.

For what it was worth, Erik didn't seem to know what to do either. He managed to dodge the first few punches, largely by virtue of being skinny and quick, but he skidded on the patch of ice beside Ahmed's car. He didn't fall down, but was thrown off balance enough that his face collided with Montag-Brandon's fist. It wasn't a very accurate punch, but there was a great deal of force behind it. His knuckles made contact with Erik's right eye and his heavy metal wristwatch caught him square on the nose. There was an odd tearing sound, Erik's head reeled back as his hands went up immediately to where he'd been hit before his ass hit the asphalt.

Nobody moved. Erik remained on the ground with his hands over his face and Montag-Brandon just looked startled at the idea that he might have _hurt _someone. After a moment of indecision, he and his friends decided to run off before Erik recovered his wits and went after them. At least, Christine was sure that was what would happen the moment he got off the ground and she tried desperately to think of what she could do about it. Nothing sprang to mind, short of tackling Erik before he had the chance to get up and moving and that would probably only slow him down, not stop him.

Oddly enough, though, Erik didn't stand up and give chase, he just got on his knees, one hand feeling around in the dark as though he'd lost a contact lens or something. Equal parts confused and afraid, Christine crept closer to Erik, just close enough to see blood seeping out from under Erik's hand.

"E-Erik?" she asked tentatively, not sure if he was going to have another breakdown or not. "Are-are you okay?"

"Fine," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Go back inside. The pizza guy should be here soon."

All that and the most pressing concern on his mind was_ paying the pizza guy? _Maybe he had a concussion.

"Erik – hang on, are you bleeding? I think you're bleeding. Let me see," Christine pleaded, crouching next to her friend on the icy pavement as she reached over to coax his hand away from his face. It was a task easier said than done as Erik was much stronger than her and he most definitely did _not _want to be coaxed. In the meantime, the car alarm blared on, louder than ever it seemed to Christine's ears. The sound just filled her with a mounting sense of dread.

"It's fine," he spat, his voice muffled behind his hand. "Just leave it alone, Christine, I'm serious."

Rolling her eyes, she redoubled her efforts to get him to let go of his face and let her take a look at him. "Yeah? Well, _I'm_ serious and if you're bleeding I want to see. Just show me, stop being such a baby -"

"I SAID LEAVE IT ALONE!" he fairly shrieked at her, blue murder in his eyes. That made Christine pause and she looked at him with anger and disbelief warring in her face. The fact that he was being such a bastard when she just wanted to help left her feeling both hurt and pissed off. Pissed off being the dominant emotion.

"What the fuck is your problem?" she demanded, folding her arms defensively over her chest. "Why are you acting like this? I just want to help - "

"Yeah, well, thanks, but you can't," Erik replied raggedly. It was a slight improvement, at least he wasn't screaming at her anymore. He crawled away from her, head inclined toward the ground as he felt around and muttered to himself, "Where the fuck is it? I will _kill _that motherfucker, where the fuck - "

Then silence. A long, heavy awkward silence as Erik knelt in the grass and gravel next to the parking lot. Then the screaming started again, louder than the car alarm. "God_dammit!_ GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!"

As annoyed as she was with him currently, Christine really did not want hotel security to come running, so she stomped over to Erik and smacked him on the shoulder, shushing him. "Shut up! Oh my God, what is _wrong_ with you?"

Well, so much for being quiet. On the bright side, Erik did stop shouting, but what followed was infinitely worse than his screaming like a maniac. He started laughing.

"What is _wrong_ with me, Christine? What is _wrong_ with me? I suppose it's time you found out." And then he dropped his hand and turned around.

Christine screamed. A sharp, short, shocking little thing that made her throat hurt and was swallowed up by the whine of the car alarm. Clapping her hands over her mouth, she just stared for a moment at Erik as though she'd never seen him before – and truth be told, she hadn't.

It's amazing what a difference a nose makes. Any alteration to that feature can utterly transform a person. One need look no farther for a great example of how reducing its size can ruin a life than Jennifer Gray's career. And honestly, the condition of Erik's face was slightly more shocking than the fact that Joel Gray had procreated at some point.

It wasn't that he was something worth screaming at. Truth be told, Christine's initial freak out was brought on by her own mind and the thought, '_Holy shit, that kid punched Erik's nose off!'_ Honestly, once she'd just sat for a moment and _thought_, Christine would realize that this was actually a fortuitous circumstance since no real damage had been inflicted, after all. There would be no trip to the hospital to set a broken nose. Mostly because _there was no nose_. Just a hole. A hole, with no nostrils and no...nothing.

Christine knew she was being a total spaz, but she just couldn't look away. It was the weirdest thing she had ever seen in person and now she was gaping at Erik, even though her mind was _screaming_ at her that this was _ruderudeRUDE_, she could not help staring at him...more specifically at the hole in the middle of his face where, just ten seconds ago there had been a perfectly normal looking nose. And that was the craziest thing. Perfectly normal looking. Sure, Erik wasn't textbook handsome, but he had a _face_ like anyone else, he wasn't extraordinarily ugly or anything, but right now Erik without a nose looked a hell of a lot different from Erik _with _a nose and Christine was not processing those distinctions well. Honestly, he didn't have a _nose?_ How did that even work? How did he _smell? _How did he _taste_ things – was that why he didn't like eating? Because he didn't have any sense of taste? And it was just _strange_ too look at a face with no nose in it. Not like a Halloween smiling skeleton, but a real face – a real face that was dripping blood from his nose-crater over his lips.

Weirdly, her extreme overreaction seemed to have calmed Erik down. A little. A bit of color rose in Erik's face and he broke off the staring contest he and Christine had been engaged in, looking at the ground and curling the fingers of his left hand into a loose fist. Muttering something that sounded like, "Fucking embarrassing," he got to his feet and ran his sleeve over his face, the blood disappearing in the fabric of his dark shirt. The air misted as he exhaled. It was really weird.

Blinking seemed to set Christine back, if not to rights, then to something more like her usual sunny disposish. After all, what's a nose between friends? Even if said 'friend' could have told the other 'friend' that he had a fake nose in the six or so months since they'd become friends so that she would not be totally shocked when said 'friend' suddenly revealed that part of his face was detachable. "We should...go back inside," she said faintly. "It's cold."

"Yeah," Erik agreed, not really looking at her. "It's cold."


	51. Gee, Officer Krupke

AN: This is another long chapter, it was WAY longer, but I've cut it down considerably. Still not entirely happy about it, but things need to move forward, dammit, this is turning out to be the longest day ever! **Googleeyes** - I think "episodes" is exactly how writing this fic feels, like this is some wacky teen drama for the CW. **The Little Corinthian **and **gerrysmylove** - thanks for the reviews! I'm glad the story makes you laugh, especially in inappropriate settings like waiting rooms!

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Don't do illegal drugs.

* * *

_Dear kindly Judge, your Honor,  
My parents treat me rough.  
With all their marijuana,  
They won't give me a puff.  
They didn't wanna have me,  
But somehow I was had.  
Leapin' lizards! That's why I'm so bad!  
_

_Officer Krupke, you're really a square;  
This boy don't need a judge, he needs an analyst's care!  
It's just his neurosis that oughta be curbed.  
He's psychologic'ly disturbed! _

_-West Side Story_

Although the pair of them had just admitted that yes, it was cold and, yeah, they should probably go inside, neither of them moved for a moment afterward. Erik was still stuck in that moment of disbelief, when the emotion burned hot in his stomach and dripped icily down his spine. That horrible feeling of, _No, this can't be happening – this cannot be happening, how could I have let this happen?_

He swallowed a few times and the feeling didn't abate. His face felt hot even though cold air was stinging his cheeks and viciously assaulting his lungs. He actually started bargaining with the Divine, pleading, _Okay, listen, I know I don't believe in you, but if this would be a hell of a time to prove that you exist. If I could just blink and the last ten minutes could, you know, __**not**__ happen, I promise I will never miss a Holy Day of Obligation ever again and I will tithe 10% of my income to the Catholic Charity Fund Appeal. Come on. Just do me this one favor and I'll be good and believe forever and ever. Amen._

He blinked.

Nothing happened. It was still cold. The car alarm was still assaulting his eardrums. Fuck.

Erik turned on his heel and strode toward the hotel lobby, keeping the collar of his coat turned up and over his face, mind whirling at a thousand miles a second as Christine jogged to keep up with his strides.

Why had he thought it was so important to keep it from her, anyway? All of their classmates knew – well, minus Raoul and Erik suppressed an involuntary shudder at the idea of Raoul seeing him 'unmasked.' It was probably a form of teenage rebellion against his born and raised Rhode Island upbringing. All his friends knew. All of his parents' friends knew. It was bad enough when new people found out he was crazy, at least that was fashionable in this day and age of celebrity rehab. For people to find out he was _deformed_...ugh, that was just not done in this century. Not in a first world country. Not even in the era of TLC sideshow programming.

If he'd been born a hundred years ago, he could have been in some kind of circus. The Living Dead Boy, he would have been called and he could have worn a funeral shroud and lay in a coffin and gotten paid for being ugly. If he hadn't died from the initial infection that ate his face as a baby, of course, which was a definite possibility pre-germ theory. Back then, circus freaks inspired fear or perverse fascination – they still did now, but now people had to be polite. Talk about how _brave_ they were, how courageous to show their faces in public and, oh, isn't it amazing how _normal _their lives were? There was an assumption there, of _inferior, less than_. How insulting.

At the end of the day, that was how Erik thought of it. No matter how smart he was, how talented he was, how much _better_ he could be, he always needed to be taken care of and looked after and _wasn't he brave?_ Being on stage, which should have felt like a fulfillment of hard work and an accomplishment of artistic integrity instead felt like an act of defiance. He relished the fact that for two hours a night, he could pretend to be someone else and the audience would never know how much he was pretending. To have people in his life who also didn't know, who didn't realize that what they saw of him existed in between doctor's appointments, therapy sessions and hospital stays, well, being with them was the best feeling on earth.

And now it was gone due to his impulse control issues. Fuck.

When they returned to the room he was sharing with the other guys, Erik headed for the bathroom and locked the door behind him. It seemed like an appropriate response under the circumstances.

Christine had been walking behind Erik the whole way in, trailing him and trying not to be conspicuous as she glanced up at his half-hidden face. A stupidly impulsive part of Christine's psyche wanted to wave its arms and shout, "Oh my God, do you people realize this kid doesn't have a nose? Because I didn't. Are you looking? Can you tell? Because I couldn't!" But that part of her was told to shush by her conscience and piped down quickly after.

She probably shouldn't have been surprised when Erik locked himself in the bathroom, but she did jump when he slammed the door. Ahmed looked up at her in concern. "No pizza?"

"Is it free if we have to wait more than half an hour?" Jamie asked, going to the window to peer outside. "Because I think it should be free."

Christine just shook her head mutely. She had completely forgotten that she was even hungry. "Um. We didn't...we didn't check for the pizza guy. Um. Ahmed. There...your car window is broken."

Ahmed's eyes went wide and he joined Jamie at the window. "Are you _shitting_ me? Are you fucking kidding me? What happened?"

Sitting down on the bed next to Meg, mind awhirl, Christine shrugged, "Those kids from the other school threw a rock. Through your back windshield. Erik went after them." Under slightly different circumstances, she would probably be very upset about that fact. She'd probably be jumping up and down, her voice would be at a pitch that was only comfortable for dogs to listen to and she'd be getting all kinds of freaked out, but now? Well, a broken window didn't seem all _that_ dramatic.

Ahmed appeared to be waffling between concern, whether he should be angry over the damage that had been done to his car (he was) or worried about the damage Erik had done to himself (he was). He decided to go double-worry and decided to buy stock in hair dye to compensate for going prematurely gray. "Fuck," he muttered, scrubbing his hands over his face. "Okay, I'm going to go downstairs to deal with the car."

"I'll go with you!" Jamie piped up. "I'll pay the pizza guy, Christine, do you have the cash?"

"Yeah," Christine nodded, still slightly dazed. She glanced up at Jamie when she came over to take the money and wanted to yell, _Did __**you**__ know? Did you? Because I had no freaking idea._ So she wisely kept her mouth shut. Next to her, Meg was rooting around in the duffle bag she'd brought along on the trip.

"I think I have some duct tape," she mumbled into her bag. "We could tape a trash bag over the hole until we can get the van to a repair place. They're probably closed by now." Meg liked to occasionally prove that, yes, she was a lesbian's daughter because she had MacGuyver-like fix-it skills. Never mind the fact that her mother only ever set foot in the Home Depot once to buy a new stove that she hired someone else to install. It was the principle of the thing and some illusions needed to be maintained for society to function at its normal level.

Freddy, clearly unimpressed with Meg's fix-it inclinations, wrinkled his nose. "That's a whole new level of ghetto. Was it that Brandon guy, Christine? Because I'm pretty sure we can get them thrown out of the competition for that shit. Did you see his face?"

"Huh?" Christine asked, brow furrowing. _Oh yeah, I saw his face. Did you know he doesn't have a nose? Because I didn't._ "Um. No. Erik saw them, he ran after them, I ran after _him_..."

"Well, you know, I don't blame him," Meg said, taking her duct tape and making for the door. On her way out she paused and knocked encouragingly on the bathroom door. "Nice job, hun. Good thing you're crazy, you'll probably get away with it."

Once the room was empty of all parties except Freddy and Christine, the curly-haired boy gave her an evaluative sideways glance over the top of his glasses. "Erik didn't inflict _serious _damage, did he? Like...everyone's still alive?"

"Huh? Oh yeah, no he um...crap, yeah, no, he actually came off worse, way worse, he didn't even punch the other kid." Her mind was reeling as she tried to decide how much she should – or could – tell him. Did he know? Could she go with her original gut instinct and tell him that Montag punched Erik's nose off? He probably wouldn't buy it.

As it turned out, Freddy only latched on to one particular implication of her statement and gleefully cackled, "Erik lost a fight?" Then again, a grin splitting his face from ear to ear, "Oh my God, he lost a fight? That's hilarious. Mr. 'Oh, I'm so cool, I wear a trench coat' lost a fight against some squirrelly theatre kid? Please tell me it was the guy with the Elvis Costello glasses, oh, _please_ Christine."

"It wasn't funny," she said defensively, her emotions starting to wake up again. "_I_ was freaking out, he could have been really hurt, he's...bleeding. A little. I mean, I've never seen a fight before."

"Sorry," he said, deflating a little. "I mean, I'm sure it wasn't funny at the time, but...well, you haven't known Erik as long as I have. He needs to be taken down a peg every once in a while."

With that he got up and knocked loudly on the bathroom door. Even though he knew just how awful Erik could be sometimes, that didn't mean he was utterly without compassion for the craziest snowflake in town. "Aw, come on out little soldier," he called soothingly through the heavy metal door. "I'll patch your battle scars and write epic poems to your memory. We'll sing songs of this day in the mead hall for centuries, now dry your tears, reapply your mascara and come out of the bathroom."

Silence resonated from the other side of the door. Freddy frowned and rattled the door handle. "Erik? Come on, I promise I won't make fun of you anymore, just open the door." When he didn't get any kind of response, he turned to Christine in bewilderment. "What's wrong with him?"

Out of a desire to move than a real expectation that she was going to do anything to help the situation, Christine got up and moved next to Freddy. She considered her next words carefully, but determined that there really wasn't anything she could do or say to make this situation worse than it was. "He...the other kid punched him in the face and, um...he...some of it..." She bit her lip and got up on her toes to whisper in Freddy's ear, "_Fell off."_

Freddy's eyes went wide behind his glasses and he looked at the door apprehensively. "_Ooh_," he breathed as comprehension dawned. "Okay. Shit. Well...let's...leave him alone for a minute." Because an angry Erik was bad enough, but considering the fact that he _lived _with the kid and had only seen him sans facial prosthetics three times before (once when he was heavily medicated so it practically didn't count) meant that the aforementioned special snowflake would be _pissed_ that strangers had seen his unadorned face. Beckoning Christine along, he left the room and the two of them stood awkwardly in the hallway until Ahmed came back with pizza and the girls.

"Well, the windshield's busted," he declared grimly. "I can't do anything about it until morning, which sucks since I'm going to have to get up fucking early to get to a repair place before rehearsal."

"Did you talk to the police?" Freddy asked.

Ahmed shrugged. "Yeah, for a minute, but they were just there because someone else's car alarm got set off. _Their_ car was fine, mine was a wreck. They asked if any of us saw anything, but we hadn't and I didn't want to get our asses thrown out of the competition because Erik was fighting, Tim would kill me. And him, but mostly me." He lifted up his left hand, which held a large, smooth ornamental stone. "I'm keeping the rock. I think I'll name it Hugh. The cops didn't want it, they figured it was some asshole local kids and there'd be no point in prosecuting since nothing was actually stolen."

"And the hotel doesn't reimburse for cars damaged in their parking lot, which is pretty typical, but still total bullshit," Meg supplied.

Jamie, who was balancing two pizza boxes piped up with a rather obvious question, "Why are we standing in the hallway? And is Erik still in the bathroom? Because I need to pee."

One of the perils of melodramatically locking oneself in the bathroom is the fact that, eventually, other people will have to _use_ that bathroom. "Erik's kind of a mess right now," Freddy said awkwardly, exchanging a significant look with Ahmed. "Like...a _mess. _Like a Jack Skellington mess."

"Are you kidding me?" Ahmed's shoulder's drooped and he scrubbed a hand over his face. When sorrows come, they come not in single spies, but in battalions and the same can be said for theatre-related drama. He wouldn't be surprised if they all got food poisoning from the pizza and the hotel caught fire that night. It would be completely typical. "Jesus H. Christ. Um, Jamie, can you...hold it, for a bit?" After receiving her firm assurance that, yeah, she could hold it, but not for, like, an hour, Ahmed went back in the room and encouraged everyone to start eating pizza in the hallway.

Stealing himself, he knocked on the door and called, "Dude, let me in. It's just me, everyone else is outside eating pizza." After some muffled shuffling, the lock on the door clicked and by the time Ahmed managed to slip in and re-lock the door behind him, Erik had managed to melodramatically pose himself. He was curled up in the bathtub, in an impossible position for one so tall, his long legs somewhere around his ears as one arm dangled languidly over the side. His nose was lying on fuzzy bathmat.

Sighing, Ahmed sad down on the closed toilet and nudged the nose out of his way with the toe of his sneaker. Uncharacteristically for these exchanges, Erik spoke first.

"Sorry about your car."

Giving another of his patented long-suffering sighs, Ahmed just shook his head and stared at the wall. "Yeah. Don't worry about it, man. It wasn't really your fault." Which it wasn't, technically. It wasn't as though Erik had thrown the rock himself, after all.

Erik looked up at him rather pathetically, all deep-set, red-rimmed hazel eyes and a ghastly pout. "It kind of was. I shouldn't have goaded them."

"Eh, they were looking to be goaded. People don't bang on car windows, demand you move your car – all _after_ performing the worst play since _Dreams of Antigone – _if they're not looking to pick a fight. They deserved to be insulted." Maybe not to the point where they become so incensed that they perform random acts of property damaged, but a _little_ insult never hurt anyone.

"Yeah they did," Erik agreed, "but you did _not_ deserve to have your car vandalized. Hence...sorry."

"Well, they're complete assholes. What normal person throws a rock at someone's car because they didn't like their art?"

"What normal person runs after the perpetrators with every intention of hitting them until they bleed?"

Ahmed had to think for a moment, but then he replied, "The same kind of normal person who has their nose, what, punched off by someone in his vigilante quest for justice?" Plucking the fallen piece of silicon off the floor gingerly, Ahmed examined it. There was an obvious tear from one side through the right nostril. "I thought you glued this thing on."

"I do," Erik replied miserably. "It was cold, the spirit gum half-froze and was brittle and the other guy was wearing...I don't know, a watch or chunky bracelet or something and it fucking tore." It was also over two years old and wasn't fitting perfectly anymore, he actually had an appointment to get a new one as a sort of pre-birthday present, but that plan was shot to shit now.

"Your parents should get their money back. Cheap craftsmanship."

"Fuck yeah, they should." Erik sank even more deeply into the tub, head falling back against the plastic wall with a dull thud. "What the fuck am I going to do? We have a show to do tomorrow and I'm missing half my face."

"You're not missing half your face," Ahmed replied reasonably. "Just...part of it. Don't you have a spare?"

"At home. And they don't fit properly anymore, that's why I got a new one." Erik said this as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, and maybe it was for someone with a nasal prosthesis, but Ahmed just figured a fake nose was a fake nose. One had to be as good as another.

"I think Meg has some rubber cement in her bag. Want me to try and fix it? It's the best we can do unless you want to call your dad and have him drive one of your old ones up here." His tub-bound friend gave him one of those looks that he usually sported when he thought Ahmed was being an idiot. The space between his eyes wrinkled a little and his mouth turned down, but without a nose to interrupt the lines of displeasure, Erik wound up looking even more annoyed than usual.

"Do your worst." Hunkering further still into the confined space, showing no signs of moving, Ahmed realized that Erik was going to do what he did best during stressful situations: be unreasonable. As he just stared at him, Erik looked back defiantly. "What? I'm _not_ going back out there. You want to fix it, that's fine, do it up, bring it back in and I'll leave, but until then...bring me a pillow, I'll stay here all night."

Ahmed got up off the toilet and left the nose on the side of the sink. "For fuck's sake," he mumbled, giving Erik's arm a kick. "Move over, I'm coming in."

Erik gave the tub a glance and looked up at Ahmed, "Are you kidding? I can barely fit in here."

"Nope," he said, shoving Erik's legs over the side of the tub. "Move over, dude. If you can be stubborn, so can I."

And so he squished into the tub, jamming his shoulder into the spout, but he was in and the two of them were sitting awkwardly, side by side with their legs hanging over the edge with the edge of the soap ledge digging into the back of Erik's head, but he didn't complain. "So, tell me why you're being a drama queen – oh, also, you're getting out of the tub whether you like it or not because tomorrow morning you're coming with me to the repair shop and going halves on that windshield."

"I'll pay for the whole thing if you don't make me get out of the tub," Erik offered.

"Yeah, no, not good enough. I'll need moral support while my baby undergoes surgery. And don't even mention that they might not make windshields for that kind of car anymore. Because I will turn the water on. And you will get soaked."

"I wasn't going to say that," Erik lied, shifting to try and get the sharp plastic away from his brain stem. "I still don't want to get out of the tub."

"Well, you have to," Ahmed said. "If nothing else, Jamie has to pee."

This was not a compelling argument. "She has her own hotel room to pee in. Make her go there."

Sighing again, Ahmed continued philosophically, "Erik, you can't live your life in a hotel tub. Or, you know, spend the rest of this trip in a hotel bathtub, you can't just...think of yourself and what you want to do all the time. Or even most of the time. That's not how the world works."

Erik actually had the balls to look insulted when Ahmed accused him of selfishness. "I'm not doing this for myself." Liar. "I don't just always think of myself." Slightly smaller lie. "I want to...spare them." Moderately smaller lie than the last one, but still a lie. Are you keeping score?

"Excuse me? Spare them from what?"

"From all _this_," Erik gestured vaguely to his face. "It's not...pleasant to look at."

"It's not that bad," Ahmed said immediately and that was just a teeny tiny white lie, which doesn't count toward the overall tally. It wasn't that Ahmed had seen Erik's real face so many times that he stopped noticing, but sometime around third grade it lost its novelty. So yeah, if Erik wasn't wearing his nose, sure, he noticed, he just didn't care either way. Now, the _first_ time he saw Erik's face...but that was a childhood trauma to relive another day. "Just if you're not used to it, it's a little weird, but - "

"You didn't see her face," Erik mumbled, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. It wasn't that there was anything very interesting on the ceiling, but Erik decided that now would be the perfect time for an experiment. He remembered hearing on a children's television show once that if you rolled your eyes up in your head, it would do something to your eyes so your tear ducts wouldn't be able to produce moisture. Yep. Now seemed like an excellent time to test that theory.

"Her?" Ahmed asked blankly. Then, comprehension dawning, "_Oh. _Christine. Well?"

"She screamed."

"Screamed?"

"Screamed.

"Oh," Ahmed said awkwardly. "Shit. That's...uh, I'm sorry, dude. That's tough." Because what do you say to your best friend when the girl he definitely likes, (possibly romantically because despite what Erik said, Ahmed wasn't convinced that he was 100% asexual), screams at the sight of his face? "You want to smoke?"

Now, it might seem that marijuana was Ahmed's solution to many of life's problems. It was. Whenever he was stressed, whenever problems were mounting with no end in sight, when he needed to relax, when he was trying to get _Erik_ to relax, etcetera, it was just a convenient (if slightly expensive) method of ensuring that for a brief space of time, everything was...cool. For an hour or three, if he was lucky. He'd just always had extra spending money and no one he knew got crazy paranoid and nothing _bad_ ever happened, it wasn't like they were dropping acid or anything, so where was the harm? Aside from constantly putting off dealing with problems head-on, offering a temporary solution to assuaging life's troubles, inhaling carcinogens and the daily repression required to keep from dwelling on unpleasantness after the high went away, it was the perfect solution. At least he thought so and Erik thought so and yet again they turned on the bathroom vent, filled the room with smoke and made Jamie wait it out in the hallway until, twenty minutes later, Erik was in a pseudo-happy daze and prepared to face the world again.


	52. I Know Him So Well

AN: Quickie update! Not much to say about this, but I should have another 'Deleted Scene' chapter coming up about what's going on in the meantime all of this. Stay tuned! And **Googleeyes**, you provided some inspiration for this little scene, because there's nothing better than a misunderstanding to liven things up!

* * *

_Wasn't it good? Wasn't he fine?_  
_Isn't it madness, he won't be mine._  
_But in the end, he needs a little bit more than me._  
_More security - he needs his fantasy and freedom._  
_I know him so well._  
_It took time to understand him_  
_I know him so well._

_-Chess_

As Erik and Ahmed jammed towels under the crack in the door and prepared to fill the bathroom with smoke, Christine passed on the pizza and made her way back to the room she was sharing with the other girls. The past twenty minutes had completely destroyed her appetite and she really wasn't comfortable with the idea of making merry with the others while Ahmed tried to talk Erik out of the bathroom. Maybe she should have stayed, but the others were perfectly satisfied to eat pizza in the hallway and barely registered her leaving. The fact was, if they had moaned and groaned and begged her to stay behind, she would have, but they just shrugged, said goodnight and dug into the pepperoni. That stung a bit and left her feeling slightly hurt on top of everything else she was going through that night.

It wasn't that she was super vain and thought everyone at Memorial just _loved_ her, it just struck her sometimes, at moments like this, how much of an outsider she was in her group of friends. Erik had kind of been her in, he was the one who usually called and invited her to things, he was the one she talked to the most outside of the group (as her roommates, Meg and Sorelli didn't count) and it looked like she had royally screwed everything up there. It occurred to her to run back to the room, pound on the bathroom door until Erik came out and she could apologize to him – but apologize to him for what? 'Sorry I acted like a total spaz, but I thought you lost your nose in a fight?' That would surely go over well.

He shouldn't even have been fighting in the first place! Really, this was all _Erik's_ fault. For all the fun she'd had since she enrolled at school, Erik had also been responsible for some of the most heart-poundingly horrible moments of her life this year and not all of them could be laughed off with a shrug and a shake of the head. He was incredibly reckless and yeah, maybe he had some issues and couldn't help it some of the time, but that still wasn't an excuse for every stupid thing he did. He was eighteen year's old, for crying out loud! He could have gotten seriously hurt in that fight or seriously hurt someone else or the cops could have come and the whole school could have been blacklisted from the competition.

It was in this foul mood that Christine made the meandering walk to her hotel room – only to realize that she'd left her key card with Meg. Closing her eyes and kicking the door in frustration (which hurt her toe far more than it hurt the door), she started to make her way back to the boys' room to ask for the card back – but stopped when she saw Raoul walking towards her from the other end of the hallway.

"Hey," he said pleasantly, smiling at her since he was not a mindreader and did not know that Christine wasn't in a smiling mood. "Where's everybody else?"

"Upstairs," Christine said shortly. Then, realizing that Raoul wasn't the one causing problems and wasn't the one she should be irritated with, elaborated, "They're in your room – or, outside your room, actually. Erik's...kind of having a moment."

"Oh, Raoul said awkwardly, leaning up against the wall and running his hands through his hair. "Um. Why?"

Rolling her eyes and throwing her hands up Christine sighed. "He's Erik. Whatever. I don't really want to talk about it." Because as much as she wanted to unburden her guilt and anger on a friendly soul, Raoul really didn't need to hear the whole story and he probably didn't want to anyway. "What happened to the rest of the Scooby Gang?"

"They wanted to go swimming, we split up to look for people...well, okay, that's not true," he admitted, turning a little pink in his cheeks. "I offered to split up since I kind of wanted to get away from them – not that I don't like everybody, I do, it's just it's a little...much. You know?"

"Oh God, yeah," Christine sighed, sinking to the floor with her back up against the door. "They're just...sometimes, it's like they're speaking in inside jokes and I'm never in on any of them. I don't think they mean to do it, or they're actively trying to be mean and exclude me...it's just awkward."

"Tell me about it," Raoul agreed, joining her on the floor. "It's great that they've got this bond, but sometimes I just feel like, hi, I'm here too, can I join the conversation?" He grinned, flashing perfectly even white teeth, "I even laugh along sometimes, when they joke about things I wasn't there for and I always wonder if they think I'm being a poser or something, which is stupid because, aren't they being rude for making jokes that not everyone will understand in the first place?"

"Yeah," Christine nodded, though she didn't think it was _rude_ exactly, just inconsiderate. Rude implied an intent to cause insult and it wasn't like anyone meant to be insulting...90% of the time, anyway. It felt really good to have a conversation with someone who was just as outside of all of this nonsense as she was and Raoul was suddenly looking like a _really_ good confidante. "I just..._God_, it can be so frustrating sometimes. I mean, we're not in high school anymore and sometimes it feels like they're this weird clique."

Raoul nodded, scooting a little closer to Christine as he did so. "Yeah, and it really sucks for me sometimes because I don't think Erik really likes me all that much and he's just, like, their freaking leader or something. Have you noticed that everyone just...sorta goes along with what he wants? I mean, he's talented, but he's...uh. You know."

"Oh, believe me, I know. He's..._so _frustrating sometimes. Like...like, he acts like a jerk, like a huge jerk and he doesn't trust you with things and I guess that's because he thinks I'm – that _some_ people are idiots and don't understand things or couldn't understand things if they knew certain things and, I mean, there are just some things that you eventually _tell _people. Maybe not when you first meet them, but eventually after you get to know them and you're friends and you've bonded and you've visited him in the hospital after he was a complete _asshole_ and I'm sorry, but you can't just explain every bad thing you do as not mattering because you have _problems_." After her vague, but spirited monologue, Christine glared at Raoul, obviously hoping for some equally enraged sympathy. "You know?"

It took Raoul a moment to respond. Though he couldn't claim any diplomas in psychoanalysis, he did understand that Christine was upset about something. Upset about something to do with Erik, something that he hadn't told her that she thought he should have by now. Hmm.

_Well_, Raoul reasoned to himself, putting his Sherlock Holmes thinking cap on. _It has to be something personal because if it was just something stupid, like his favorite pizza topping, she wouldn't be so worked up._ Because Christine, though not a doormat, was usually pretty even-keeled. It was one of the things he liked best about her, she was so nice and easy-going and understanding. Easy to talk to – except when she was monologing vaguely to him about something she clearly expected him to agree with. _So, something personal about Erik that she found out, that he didn't tell her that she thinks he should have told her. Okay. What big secrets does Erik have about his personal life?_

Here he was kind of at a loss. Since he and Erik _didn't_ talk that much and yes, he had been avoiding him pretty thoroughly since that whole basement incident which totally freaked him out and completely extinguished the flame he'd been carrying for him since that long-ago October make-out, Raoul really didn't know enough about what Erik shared about his life and what he didn't share about his life to make an educated guess. Erik had mentioned once that even though his mom and dad called themselves 'husband' and 'wife' they weren't legally married (it was some kind of protest statement, they hadn't really gotten into it). Was that what Christine was mad about? But no, her dad and his girlfriend had been together for years and weren't married, so Raoul didn't think she would have a problem with two people having a long-term relationship outside the bonds of holy wedlock.

Clearly it wasn't the fact that Erik was a few fries short of a Happy Meal since they _all_ found out about that back in December. And she'd been really adamant that she didn't care and it didn't matter that Erik was crazy, they were still friends and that was that. Raoul had been really impressed (and a little jealous) that she felt so strongly about her friendship with Erik and he let the matter drop entirely, hadn't brought it up since. So, what could it be? Unless -

Oh. Oh, crap. Thinking back all those months ago, to his ill-conceived October Crush, Raoul remembered asking Christine whether or not Erik was gay. For his part, he'd kind of assumed so, even though Erik didn't give off an obvious vibe about it...then again, he hadn't realized Armand was gay until Charlotte told him, so he clearly couldn't be trusted to figure that out on his own. Anyway, Christine said she didn't know, that she asked once and all Erik said was that he didn't want to talk about it. So maybe he _was _gay. And Christine was mad because he didn't tell her and she found out from someone else – but that still didn't completely make sense, since why would she be mad that Erik was gay?

Unless – oh. _Oh._ Unless _Christine_ had a crush on Erik and found out he was _with someone_ and _that's_ why she was mad! It all fit! It made perfect sense! And _yeah, _duh, of _course _you'd tell one of your friends that you're dating someone and if they found out and they had a crush on you the whole time and didn't know, they'd be really upset.

Proud of himself for figuring out what the problem was, Raoul nodded vigorously and said, "Yeah, totally. That's just a completely dick thing to do."

"I _know!_" Christine exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. "It's so...childish. Again, we're not in freaking high school, it's not cool or cute to keep secrets like that from people, like you have to be in the in-crowd to find certain things out. Jesus. I mean, what the hell?"

"I don't know," Raoul shook his head. "That's douchey, like, why not just say it? Really, I mean it's not like something like that even should be a secret. What's the big deal?"

"There isn't one! There really isn't, until you _make _it a big deal by being all secretive and then blowing up when it's out of the bag or whatever." In her ire, Christine had totally forgotten that, in theory, Raoul had no idea what she was talking about. And she had more or less forgotten her promise to herself to keep it that way.

"He got made at _you?_" Raoul asked, sounding slightly disgusted at such conduct. "Why? You didn't do anything wrong. He's the one who should have come clean to you first, especially if..." But here he trailed off. Though he wanted to know the identity of Erik's boyfriend/girlfriend (since they still hadn't sorted that issue of preference out) and who had told all to Christine, he figured it wasn't his place to ask. If she wanted to tell him, she would tell him – or he could work it out with the mad detective skills he just discovered he had.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case may be), Christine was on too much of a roll to stop her emotional outburst now so she just sighed and dragged her fingers through her hair in frustrating, yelling at the ceiling. "Ugh, I know, right? He gets all out of control and laughs at me and yells at me, like I'm supposed to know what the hell is going on. He's...he's such an _asshole_, I don't know why I'm friends with him." Looking back at Raoul, her eyes softened and her mouth turned up into a little half-smile. "You're _so_ much nicer than him. God, you're so much nicer than all of them, do you want – I mean, can we take a walk somewhere? I don't really want to deal with anyone else right now."

"Yeah, sure!" Raoul said, scrambling to his feet and offering Christine a hand up. "I think there's...a twenty-four hour gym or something. It's almost midnight, I don't think anyone will be down there."

Christine gratefully accepted the help off the floor and smiled properly, if a little tightly, at her friend. "Great, that sounds fine. God, you're so awesome, thanks for listening." And with that, she threw her arms around Raoul and gave him a very long and very tight hug, all the while the phantom image of Erik's noseless, embarrassed, angry face glared at her from behind her closed eyelids.


	53. Why Must the Show Go On?

_Why must the show go on?_  
_It can't be all that indispensable._  
_To me, it really isn't sensible on the whole_  
_To play a leading role, _  
_While fighting those tears you can't control._

_-Noel Coward_

Naturally, it was not possible to remain sequestered in the hotel gym until the end of the trip, though Christine was seriously considering it. Typically of her luck, some middle aged creepazoid turned up around four am, ostensibly to use the elliptical machine, but his main objective seemed to be staring at her until she felt uncomfortable enough to leave. Raoul seemed grateful for their departure, he'd been falling asleep on and off for the last hour and would prefer to do so in a bed, she was sure. Christine steeled herself upon returning to her room, but she needn't have bothered; no one was there. The room was totally deserted and she was too pissed and tired to care.

Christine fell into a dead sleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow, but the buzzing on her phone woke her only a few precious hours later. Groggily, she flipped her phone open and read the text from Meg four times before she understood what it said:

**hey u ok? we didnt want 2 wake u up but were rehearsing 10, meet me in the lobby for bfast? im here already, just cum down when yr dressed.**

It was 8:45. That meant Christine had just enough time to shower and put on clean clothes if she didn't want to stand Meg up – she wasn't even sure she wanted to see Meg, but given that she had to see everyone at rehearsal, it seemed stupid to blow her off. Meg hadn't done anything wrong anyway, aside from having crappy taste in friends. And choosing to spend time with them when Christine kind of needed some TLC thrown her way. Well, that was fine, Raoul stepped up, he was such a great guy, she would just have to spend the rest of the trip with him to avoid any additional angst.

Her hair was still damp when she entered the lobby, relaxing infinitesimally when she saw that Meg was by herself, sitting in an armchair by one of the big picture windows. There was an empty chair next to her and assorted pastries on a little glass coffee table between the chairs. Christine sank into the empty chair and didn't say anything as Meg pushed a strawberry Danish and a hot cup of coffee toward her.

"Hey, I wasn't sure if you drank coffee, so I added lots of milk and sugar," she informed Christine. "I figured you might want some."

"I'm kind of mad at you, but thanks," Christine said, taking a sip of the coffee that wasn't so much coffee as it was sweet lukewarm milk.

Meg nodded, "Yeah, I figured you were, but I'm not sure why."

"I'm not sure why either," Christine said honestly, pushing a damp lock of wavy hair behind her ears. "I just kind of hate everyone right now."

Grimacing, Meg shook her head in a disappointed way. "Dammit, we ruined another one. I'm sorry, we tend to draw people into our network of mutual loathing after a while. It's a problem."

Christine just rolled her eyes and ate her Danish in silence. No, Meg didn't get it. Their group sort of hated the rest of the world. Christine had no quarrel with the rest of the world, she just hated that group, it was like a hive mind of bitchiness and somehow she'd been drawn into it. And not entirely against her will, which amped the self-loathing component up a notch or two. Awesome, in the span of twenty-four hours, she'd gone from being a moderately socially successful college freshman to hating most of her friends and herself. Talk about teen angst.

"You're weird," Christine said after a minute, lack of sleep making her unusually honest and cranky. "You guys…I know you _say_ you're weird, but you're all so beyond…like…"

"So, you saw what Erik really looks like, huh?" Meg interrupted. She didn't sound angry or accusative, she was just stating a fact. She'd not slept either, but unlike Christine, it didn't make her cranky, just lowered her tolerance for bullshit. "Sorry no one warned you."

Christine took another bit of Danish, though the flaky pastry tasted remarkably like sawdust at the moment. She wasn't sure whether it was an effect of crappy hotel food or her state of mind, but it was unpleasant either way. She chewed. She swallowed. She sighed. "It's…you know, it's – that's not why I'm mad."

"Really?"

"Really!"

"He said you screamed – well, he didn't say, Ahmed said, but he's usually pretty accurate when he's reporting back from Camp Erik." This time Meg's tone was a little sharp and her dark eyes narrowed as she spoke.

"Oh my God, yeah, okay, I did, but – did he tell you the whole story? Did Erik tell you the whole story because I'll bet he didn't," Christine said and plowed on through, not waiting for Meg to get a word in. "Here's what happened. We went outside because those assholes broke Ahmed's windshield and Erik got in a fight, _duh_, because he has to get one fight in a week or something to make life interesting and the other kid punched him in the face and I asked if he was okay and he _freaked out_. And yeah, he showed me his face and I screamed because I was surprised and I thought he was really, really hurt, but he wasn't, he was just…being Erik. And you know what, I don't think I like Erik anymore."

Unlike many people in her position, forced to reconcile one version of a story with another's perspective, Meg did not sit there as Christine spoke, half-listening and planning her rebuttal. She genuinely sat there, took in what Christine had to say and reformed her opinion accordingly. It was a rare thing to find in humanity in general, a rarer thing to find among friends. "I get that," she said, after a pause.

That threw Christine for a loop. "You _get_ that? You…wait, what do you mean?"

Meg shrugged, "I get that. Erik can be a major, major shithead about things. Sometimes I figure it's his bi-polar and sometimes I figure it's just him and what happened last night sounds like it was just him. Sometimes he's a huge asshole, he doesn't think before he talks or does things and then gets all emo when the shit hits the fan."

"So why are you still friends with him?" Christine asked, stunned. "I mean…he's a dick, he can be violent, he treats people like crap…why do you put up with him? Why should I?"

Meg sighed and glanced around to make sure no one was really paying attention to them and leaned closer to Christine, beckoning her forward. "Because I like him," she said simply. "I don't like him because he's a violent asshole and a shitty friend sometimes, I like him in spite of that stuff. I like him because he's funny and insanely smart and he writes music inspired by Doctor Who and he's actually a good friend when he tries. You've kind of seen him at his worst, so I'm not saying you should have lots of warm squishy feelings about him or you should stay friends with him, but I'm just saying, that's why I stay friends with him."

Honestly, Christine didn't know if those were good enough reasons. It was the kind of thing they talked about on _Tyra_ and _Dr. Phil_, the 'toxic relationship.' Or whatever. On shows like that, it always led to badness, staying friends with someone who treats people badly, but has some nice qualities that make up for the bad ones. Wasn't it unhealthy? Christine never had these problems with her high school friends, none of them were basketcases. It was like living in one of those cautionary tales books, like _Go Ask Alice_ or an after school special. What was going to happen next, they all dropped acid together and someone jumped out a window? Alright, maybe that was extreme, but being friends with this group made it hard for her to catch her and Christine wasn't sure this school was right for her. Maybe it would have been better to go to a big school in a large city where she didn't know anyone and none of the other students came into school with all of this interpersonal baggage. Sometimes she felt like she'd been dropped into a play in the middle of Act 2 and didn't know her lines.

"I think I might transfer," Christine said abruptly, surprising herself when she actually spoke the words aloud. "I don't know if this whole Rhode Island thing is a good fit. I might want to get out of New England."

Obviously Meg hadn't been expecting that either. Her mouth dropped open and the attitude of cool composure that she'd been affecting the entire conversation fell away completely. "Oh, no, Christine, you can't – because of Erik? Is this all because of Erik? Because he'll get over himself, he feels really bad about what happened, he was going to apologize when he saw you, I just wanted to make sure you – "

Christine held up a hand and cut the other girl off. "No, no, it's not Erik," not _all_ Erik, "I just…I think I want to go to another kind of school. Something with a bigger program, I don't…I don't think I like the idea of repertory theatre as much as I did. I think I need to be somewhere with more people." So she could go back to being just another headshot in the lineup, not stuck in the middle of everything, driving Sorelli to CVS to pick up Plan B, not dealing with Erik's meltdowns or stupid field trips to dress up statues. Maybe being a face in the crowd was good for her, trying to take the reigns and become a protagonist in her own life just led to a lot of crying and stress.

Meg looked at her like she didn't believe her, but Christine was kind of sick of analyzing her actions and her thoughts and everyone's opinions. She'd decided she wanted to transfer, her dream school was turning out to be kind of a nightmare and that was that. Christine got up to throw her cup and napkin away and stood behind her chair with her cellphone in her hand, flashing the hour at Meg. "Come on, we'll be late if we don't leave now."

Meg and Christine only barely got to the theatre on time, so Erik didn't get the chance to make a beeline for Christine as he'd planned to. To be fair, he and Ahmed had only just arrived five minutes before them and had only just caught their breath when the girls turned up and everyone had to go through a vocal warm-up. A bit unfair, Erik planned for a lot of things, he wanted to get out and buy Christine an apology gift, like ice cream or flowers or something, but he was stuck waiting in a nasty service station while Ahmed got his windshield replaced. It would figure that in the middle of East Jabumfuck, New Hampshire they'd have the right size window for a forty year old van.

Maybe it was all the rubber cement fumes he was inhaling, but Erik felt like total shit. Everyone fell asleep watching a Man v. Food marathon on the Travel Channel, but he stayed up most of the night with Ahmed snoring in his ear, trying to figure out how he'd fucked everything up so much. It wasn't hard. He was an impulsive, arrogant prick and he had no right to be. Maybe if he was hot, if he was hot and talented then, yeah, humility might not be on the agenda, but he was ugly, talented and crazy besides. He had no right to think as highly of himself as he did. Sure, sure, he'd only internalized society's standards of beauty and society's stigma against people with mental health problems, but just because something was wrong didn't mean it wasn't true. Okay, that might have been the fumes talking, but Erik needed to cool it with the dickhead attitude.

It all seemed clear as day now, when he had time to think about it. He shouldn't have jumped that guy in the parking lot, he definitely shouldn't have gotten Christine involved, he shouldn't have screamed at her like a maniac, shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't. But he had. And now he wasn't even getting the chance to man up and apologize for being an asshole because he had a job to do and the job had to trump his personal problems.

Finally they got a ten during the act break and Erik was able to corner Christine by a bubbler – sorry, water fountain, they weren't in Rhode Island at the moment. He hadn't meant to 'corner' her, but he was tall, he had a tendency to loom. One of his many faults.

"Hey, can I talk to you?" he asked her awkwardly. She didn't look happy to see him, but she wasn't really looking at him, she was looking at his nose. Probably seemed really obvious now, the place where the seam met his actual skin, she was probably wondering how she hadn't noticed it before.

"Sure," she said after a beat, sitting down on top of a rolled up dance floor. Erik sat on the ground, so that he was looking up at her for a change.

"Listen, I want to say I'm really sorry for how I acted last night. I was an asshole and you didn't deserve it." Christine's face softened just a bit, but it was clear she was far from appeased. He should have made Ahmed stop the car and grabbed her something sugary and delicious. Tollhouse Ice Cream Sandwiches cured all unhappiness.

"Okay," Christine said, scuffing her toes on the floor. She looked at him with reproachful blue eyes. "I…I don't know what to say. I'm still mad at you and saying you're sorry doesn't make what you did alright."

Erik nodded immediately. "I know, I'm not expecting you to forgive me or anything, I just wanted to apologize because you deserve it."

Uncharacteristically, Christine rolled her eyes. "Oh, god, Erik, come on. It's crazy, you seem to love pissing people off, but you can't deal with having anyone mad at you."

Actually, she was right. Erik liked pushing people's buttons, but the second he got the silent treatment or really upset someone, he usually tried to make it up to them someway. Usually not by an outright apology, since that was embarrassing, but he'd buy them something or write them a song – he wrote Sorelli a good one after he lost her debit card (long story). But he didn't think Christine would respond well to serenading on a ukulele at the moment.

"Why didn't you just say something?" she asked him after a minute of silence. "If everyone knows…why not just tell me? "

That was a very good question; why not tell her? Since, as she said, everyone knew anyway. Well, mostly everyone. Not Raoul, obviously. "I don't know," he said, shrugging awkwardly. It was the last thing he said to her before they broke for lunch around 2:00 since Chester told them to break up the powwow and get back to rehearsing.


	54. It's a HardKnock Life

AN: Imagine my surprise this weekend when I saw so many lovely reviews for this story! Much thanks to my awesome reviewers of Chapter 53, **The Little Corinthian**, **Writer of the North**, **Alice'slittlemidgetfriend** and **Smidgie** and the rest of my fabulous readers out there in the dark. I'm in a crazy rush with school, but I do promise I haven't given up on these guys yet! Here's a nice long chapter for you to (hopefully) enjoy!

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine, I make no profit. Such is life.

* * *

_It's a hard-knock life for us!_  
_It's a hard-knock life for us!_  
_'Stead of treated, we get tricked!_  
_'Stead of kisses, we get kicked!_  
_It's a hard-knock life!_

_-Annie_

The show was…fine. That was the best that could be said for it, it was passably fine. The singing was good, the dancing was on-point, but the performance was nothing to write home about. Erik got a nice earful from Tim about how this revival stuff wasn't how live theatre was supposed to be, the performances were emphemera, there was no chance to capture the magic of that initial run six months later, he wasn't sure why they'd done this, they were _never _going back, blah, blah blibbity-bloop.

For the first five minutes of his rant, Erik nodded and made appropriately sympathetic noises, but he quickly gave up the pretense of caring; Tim obviously wasn't listening. There was another show going up after theirs, a re-imagining of _The __Merchant __of __Venice_ set in an English girls' school in the 1960s or something stupid like that and at least one school had to clear out their set pieces before the other show could move in. Since _Godspell_ had the smallest set, they were the lucky bastards chosen to hightail it out of there. Erik thought that was bullshit, but he kept his mouth shut. He didn't want to get kicked in the face by karma again, so he bit his tongue when it occurred to him that the Giant Star Trek Cubes from Hell (as he'd privately nicknamed the _Burn_ set) were taking up the most space and should logically be packed away. He even tried to gain some Brownie points by offering to stay behind with Tim, Chester and Slade to get everything tucked away in the U-Haul. He figured it bumped his score up in the little game he'd been playing for the last eighteen years affectionately known as Erik vs. The Universe. So far The Universe was winning.

When he bid the other men good night and wandered back to his room (having to try the damn key card three times before the door would budge), he found the rest of his classmates mid-orgy. Alright, not an orgy, but it looked like they were well on the way there, half-empty bottles of Gatorade littered the room, which was stuffed well beyond what the fire code would permit. Apparently, they'd invited some of the kids from Emerson who were staying down the hall, which would have been _fine_ if Erik had been able to pre-game before this little sociable.

Medication evened him out, it didn't make him friendly. Before he discovered the joys of mind-altering substances in high school, the only parties he attended were those his parents dragged him along to, usually at Tim and Chester's or the home of another couple or person from Memorial. He'd be paraded around, pat on the head, feeling awkward and humiliated the whole time before someone took pity on him and let him sit in the bedroom with all the coats to watch a movie or play video games until it was time to go. If the household had other children, though, that could be a problem. He didn't have any close friends, other than Ahmed and sometimes Meg, until he got to high school since other kids thought he was a total freak, fake nose aside. It was the late 90s, people with "disabilities" were featured on every kids' show on PBS. Hell, there was a girl in a wheelchair at his elementary school, compared to Nadia, Erik was pretty mundane. They all knew it was wrong to pick on people for things they couldn't help, like the way they looked, but in the primary school jungle general weirdness were still fair game.

Things started to change for him around sophomore year when suddenly being a surly, musically-inclined theatre geek who wore a lot of black was cool and though people weren't exactly lining up to be his friend, he wasn't being shoved into lockers or tripped in the lunch room anymore. Still had some leftover social anxiety, but the weed took care of that. Naturally, when riding back to a hotel with your foster fathers, weed was not an option, so Erik found himself unprepared to deal with the glut of people in his personal space, especially People He Did Not Know. That was the worst.

Apparently, Erik lingered in the doorway a second too long, since that was all the time it took for Jamie to squeal that "_ERIK__'__S__HERE,__GUYS!__"_ and for a general cheer to go up that accompanied drunkards seeing something new. Well, okay, he could grin and bear it for ten minutes then steal a key card off one of the girls and hang out in there room until Sorelli brought some new boy thing along with her. Maybe Charlotte would come be antisocial with him, she was kind of a party pooper by nature.

Ah, no. It only took him a second longer to see that Charlotte had heard the demon call of the bottle and was sitting on some stranger's lap, sucking face, as the kids' called it these days. Poor Charlotte, she had it pretty bad when they were little – and recently, as he recalled. Though he was a twig himself, he had common sense enough to know that size 14 was perfectly respectable. She gave Sorelli a good slut-shaming about once a week, but he figured it was largely motivated by concern with a sprinkling of jealousy for flavor. Gah, this is what he hated about being sober, he became so analytical.

Jamie was gabbing on next to him to some ginger kid about how he was _so_smart and _so_ cool and Erik _so_ did not want to hear it. When he was feeling like shit, he preferred to wallow in self-loathing and not have his stellar personality traits drunkenly slurred to complete strangers.

He extricated himself from her death grip and searched for Ahmed or Freddy or someone who could do something helpful, like give him a buzz. No way he was sampling the Gatorade bottles, not after what happened last time he got drunk. An advantage to being the tallest person in the room on any given day was that he generally had a good view of the crowd and could ascertain people's positions relatively quickly. As was to be expected, Ahmed and Freddy were toking it up with some Emersonians near an open window and Erik was about to wander over to them, when he was struck by the feeling that something was missing. An impromptu headcount revealed that one of their number was missing and it was immediately clear to him who that was: Christine.

Erik shifted through the crowd, muttering "'scuse me," as necessary though he was sure no one noticed his attempt at manners. He poked Raoul in the back of the head to get his attention. The shorter boy's blue eyes were hazy as he looked at him. At first he exclaimed, "Erik!" with a big grin, which faded slowly into an uncertain smile, as though he thought he shouldn't be happy to see him, but couldn't remember why.

"Hey," Erik said nonchalantly as he could manage over the chatter and noise from the television. Someone had the bright idea to BLAST the Broadway music channel (who knew they had digital cable in New Hampshire?) and Idina Menzel's voice reminded him of a cat's yowling on the best of days. "Where's Christine? Back in her room?"

Erik was pretty sure he could faintly see the steam gushing from Raoul's ears as he tried to puzzle out an answer. God, how had this kid graduated high school if it took him so long to formulate a sentence? He must have done lots of extracurriculars in anticipation of what must have been dismal SAT scores.

"Uh…she…huh. She was here a minute ago…"

Scratch that. ACTs. Raoul didn't seem like SAT material.

"She's mad at you," he said, comprehension dawning on his face like a light in a dark room.

Erik rolled his eyes, sure Raoul wouldn't notice or care. "Yeah, I know. Let me know where she is and I promise to avoid her." No way he was sneaking in the girls' room if Christine was in there by herself. That was a level of awkward he wasn't sure he was ready to descend to that night.

Raoul was talking, but he stopped listening some time before. "…I don't know, I guess it's not a big deal to you, but you could have…y'know. Said."

Oh, for fuck's sake, did everyone have to know his business? Raoul wasn't even involved that night and Erik really wanted to be able to privately lord it over the other boy that he was smarter and taller and more awesome than him in every way. If Raoul knew he was just the living embodiment of a bad Mel Gibson movie, then he'd have nothing to feel superior about. Working up a good scowl Erik said, "Yeah, you know what, it's not really something you go around telling people."

God, he was even more stupid than Erik realized since Raoul frowned right back at him (which made a dimple appear, Jesus, who did this kid think he _was_ being all boyish good looks right now?) and said, "Why not? I mean, it's not like something like that should be a secret."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Erik demanded. "I mean, are we seriously having this conversation? Are you that dense? Please tell me you're not that stupid."

"I'm not!" Raoul exclaimed, color flaming in his cheeks. "I'm not stupid, you're an asshole. Christine really likes you, it-it wasn't fair that you didn't tell her about your girlfriend."

…girlfriend?

"Or boyfriend," he added quickly, glancing around the room. "Whatever. You still should've told her."

Erik was silent for a long moment. What was this shit? Was Raoul trying to be funny? Trying to tease him or some shit? Or was he really the Lord of the Idiots who thought Christine was mad at him because she had some unrequited crush?

"Fuck you," Erik said finally, feeling that response encompassed his feelings on all of the above. Okay, screw karma, Raoul just really got on his nerves.

He was about to head out without a destination in mind, the vague urge to sneak into the locked hotel pool for a private moment with the chlorine and his thoughts when he heard the sound of someone dying behind the bathroom door. That gave him pause. Everyone else was talking or singing along to the music from the television and didn't seem to notice that a person was dying in the bathroom. Goddammit, this was not his night.

You know, it really wasn't his problem. He could just walk out the door and leave everyone else to deal with what would inevitably be a corpse by morning, but his better nature (probably spurned by the guilt he'd been carrying around all day) prompted him to pause and knock lightly on the door. "You alright?" he called through the metal to whoever was in there.

A groan met his inquiry, followed by a low, moan of, "Erik, _shit_ - " and more retching.

He recognized the voice immediately, even if it was made raspy by what had to be excessive vomiting. "Christine? Hey, are you okay?" Clearly not, but he should probably check.

After a momentary pause, her shaky voice came through again, "_Fine_, just…just fine. I'll be out in a minute."

_Yeah__ fucking__ right._ Erik tried the knob and was pleased to find that the door wasn't locked. "Can I check on you?" he asked, having enough experience with drunk friends to phrase his questions appropriately. "It'd make me feel better if I could check on you."

More retching. Then, "No, no, really, I'm okay – "

"Come on, Christine, I promise I won't respect you less," he said as sincerely as he could under the circumstances. That did the trick, or maybe she passed out because she stopped protesting and he heard the toilet flush. It was really very thoughtful of her, he reflected as he made his way in, quickly shutting and locking the door behind him.

Poor girl looked a mess. Her eyes had been tearing and she hadn't taken her eye makeup off after the performance and it was all running down her face. She was compulsively wiping her mouth with a hand towel and the front of her shirt was wet with water she'd used to wash her mouth out. She was pale and sitting on the edge of the tub, holding her head with her free hand. "Hey, buddy," Erik said lightly, perching next to her – not too close in case she went all Linda Blair again. "How're you feeling?"

"Awful," Christine said truthfully. "I don't even know how this happened, I just had…like…three drinks. Or three Gatorades, whatever, they didn't _taste_ strong."

"Must've been bad vodka," he said with a shrug. Meg's favorite cocktail, Everclear, grapefruit and cranberry juice, apparently tasted like fruit punch going down and a punch in the face coming back up.

"Or something," she said, leaning forward and resting her face on the cool edge of the shower tile. She sighed and muttered, "I want to lie down."

"The tub is not comfortable," he said immediately. "Trust me, I know from experience."

She gave a hollow laugh and made a face since mirth made her queasy. "I wanna go back to my room," she said plaintively.

"Okay," Erik said, standing up and offering her an arm. "I'll take you – want to take the trash can or do you think you can make it?"

Apparently that was a good question. Christine thought about it for a minute and used his arm to drag herself unsteadily to her feet. "I think I'll be okay, she said, fumbling in her pockets and handing him her key card. "Just get the door fast if I tell you."

"Noted," he agreed, opening the door and leading Christine out with an arm around her shoulders – oh, gross, puke in the hair, he really hoped she didn't get any on him, he planned on wearing this shirt again tomorrow. On their way out, a dudebrodude Erik didn't recognized saw him leaving with Christine and let out some kind of howl of approval.

"Solid, man!" he said, pounding his chest with a fist twice, then making a peace sign. "Solid!"

Erik assumed this young man was approving of the notion that he was about to take sexual advantage of a drunk girl and he just shot him a disgusted look. That's it, once he got Christine situated, he was coming back to take stock of all the girls and make sure none of them wound up with this douchebag. Christ, when did he become the responsible one?

"Gross," he muttered once he and Christine were out in the hallway.

She sniffled a little. "Sorry," she said, noticing the mess in her hair as she tried to clean it up with her hands and then wiped her hands on her jeans.

"No, no, you're fine," he said absently, sighing a little.

"No, I'm drunk," she observed sadly. "I'm drunk and I want to drop out of school."

Yeah, Erik heard about that. Meg sourly informed him that he was not only a 'fucking dramawhore,' but that his 'whore tendencies' made Christine so upset that she was thinking of transferring to another college. "You shouldn't," he said. "Well, I don't think you should. How about I go? Did you know I got accepted to MIT?"

Apparently she did not. "For theatre?" she asked, cocking her head questioningly.

Erik shook his head, "For engineering. I tinker."

"That's cool," she said and even though she was wasted, she sounded sincere. "How come you didn't go?"

Erik shrugged and told her a half-truth, "It was too expensive." And it was expensive, very expensive and he certainly hadn't gotten a great financial aid deal. It was one thing to get into MIT it was another thing entirely to get in with a free ride.

"And your friends are here," she observed, offering her own half-truth, even if she didn't know it. "That's nice. I don't have friends here."

"Sure you do," Erik said, stopping them in front of her door and swiping the card. Luckily it opened immediately. "I'm your friend. I mean, I'm a shitty friend, but I'm your friend."

Christine stumbled forward, rubbing her eyes and moving away from him. In one swift, unexpected moment, she took her shirt off and flung it on the floor. "I'm gross," she said vaguely, stumbling toward the bathroom, "I'm gonna shower don't…don't look or anything."

"Okay," Erik said, but he didn't react quickly enough since she shed her pants (the shoes were long gone, she hadn't been wearing them in the bathroom) and he got a good look at her panties sort of accidentally on purpose. They didn't match her bra, which was blue with white polkda-dots, her underwear was bright pink with orange stripes. Sorelli would have commented that she clearly wasn't planning on getting laid that night. She once informed Erik that she made sure her underwear matched if she planned on having sex. Why that memory would pop up now, he had no idea.

Averting his eyes up to the ceiling, Erik was so concerned with not paying attention to what would at any minute become naked!Christine that he missed the fact that she was yelling at him from the bathroom.

"What?" he asked, standing just outside the door, straining to hear through the spray.

"I forgot my PJs," she said, voice distorted and echoed inside the shower. "Can you get them? They're just sweatpants and a t-shirt, they're on my bed."

Well, there were sweatpants and a shirt beside the bed, so he assumed that was what they wanted. He quirked an eyebrow in amusement when he saw the word 'PINK' half washed-off printed on the back of the pants. Christine did not strike him as a Victoria's Secret kind of girl. Full of surprises, that one.

She took the shortest shower in the history of mankind, emerging a few minutes later, dripping wet, a towel wrapped around her haphazardly. Erik handed her clothes over without a word and she took them with a muttered, "Thanks," closing the door as she changed.

Erik stood uncertainly in the room, not sure what to do with himself. Should he leave? Well, he should probably make sure she wasn't going to pull a Hendrix and choke on her own vomit in her sleep, so he stuck around as Christine emerged, averting his eyes as requested since her shirt was clinging to her in all the wrong places. She sort of face-planted onto the bed and Erik, feeling pretty shitty for her since he knew exactly how she felt, turned up the covers and half-carried, half dragged her under them, placing a wastebasket next to her as needed.

"There," he said, sitting next to her on top of the covers and tucking the blankets under her chin. "Better?"

"Yeah," Christine said sleepily. "Can you put the TV on? I sleep better when there's noise."

The TV was already on the local PBS station and as luck would have it, Great Performances was showing _Faust_. He was in luck, the Jewel Song was just starting up as he turned it on.

"Oh, is this the one you like?" Christine asked, sitting up a little.

"Yeah," Erik said, surprised that drunk!Christine would remember a detail like that. "How'd you know?"

"After you said it was your favorite, I listened to this song on YouTube a few times, it's pretty," she explained, propping a pillow up between her head and his arm so she could see the television. "I didn't find the song about the angels, though."

"That doesn't come until the end," Erik explained. "Hopefully you'll be asleep by then."

"Well, poke me awake, I want to hear it."

"You want me to stick around?" Erik asked. Damn, the night was full of surprises.

"Yeah," Christine said, snuggling –legitimately snuggling against him. "I'm not mad anymore. You're being sweet. It's like you're two people, Sweet Erik and Asshole Erik. I like Sweet Erik, with the tucking in and showers. You should be him all the time."

The tucking in and showers, huh? Erik suppressed a smile and said, "Okay, I'll work on that."

"You should," Christine said, closing her eyes. "Poke me when the angels come on."

"The angels don't actually turn up during that song," Erik said, eyes flickering back to the screen. "She's just having a hallucination, you know, some productions don't even include the whole angel thing. I think it's kind of a cop-out myself, the 19th century morality tale ending it's just stupid. Things don't really turn out like that in reality, the angels coming and saving the good people and the bad guys getting dragged to hell. Real life is way more like a Sam Raimi movie, everyone gets fucked, regardless of intentions. Sam Raimi should direct a production of _Faust_, it would be awesome."

But a soft snore alerted Erik that Christine hadn't heard a word he said. She was fast asleep beside him as Mephistopheles and Faust arrived upon the scene.


	55. I'm Not Afraid of Anything

AN: Hello, faithful readers! I apologize for the gap between chapters, school tends to suck the creative juices dry. We're wrapping up this story arc and are about to embark upon another. In the meantime, enjoy this brief segment!

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_I'm not afraid of anything  
Be it mountains, water, dragons, dark or sky  
I'm not afraid of anything  
Tell me where's the challenge if you never try  
So watch me fly  
I'm not afraid  
- Songs for a New World_

Having a hangover was kind of a novel experience. At least, it was for Christine. She'd never been _really_ drunk before and as such, she'd never experienced the delightful morning after a night of binge drinking. At first, she didn't even realize she had a hangover, she thought she was just dying in an unexpected, but entirely mundane kind of way. It took Charlotte repeatedly throwing her blankets off and reassuring her that nope, she wasn't dying and she'd feel a _lot_ better if she just had a cup of coffee and a bagel to get her up.

It wasn't so much that she actually believed her, it was just that Charlotte had a way of being super forceful about her opinions and she'd started dragging Christine out of bed by her ankles that that made her stomach lurch, so she stumbled out of bed and into a fresh outfit. Morning showers were out since Meg was currently in there using all the hot water and one of the curses of curly hair meant that it was still a little damp from last night's shower – wait a sec, she took a shower?

Christine tried to give her hair a sniff on a sly as she made a show of shaking it out before tying it back in a ponytail. Definitely smelled like shampoo...but when did she shower? Honestly, she didn't remember much from the night before. Yeah, they'd performed, but it had been like she was sleepwalking, or maybe sleepjogging. She was trying to keep busy because when she wasn't busy, she was thinking about what a mess her life currently was, the school she wasn't sure was right for her, the friends she wasn't sure were really friends and then there was Erik. It was always Erik, in the end and she was trying really, really hard to _not_ think about him because every time she did, she found herself replaying that terrible moment in the parking lot. With the siren screaming and Erik screaming and the blood – it was getting bloodier and bloodier in her imagination, as though Mel Gibson had taken over the direction of the piece in her mind – it was too much. He was just too much.

The drinking helped, actually, for a while she was loose and chipper and enjoying herself at their forbidden hotel party and she felt like a real college student. Until the horrible moment when the room started spinning and she became BFFs with the rim of a toilet bowl. It got kind of hazy after that point, someone knocked on the door and said they respected her and then...um...she got back to her room, clearly and maybe watched TV? She had vague images of a really excited blonde woman with a really great voice in a dress with a blue sash. The dress had been pretty.

It was in a total daze that she made her way down to the continental breakfast with the other girls chattering a mile a minute around her. The harsh hotel lighting was doing nothing for her headache and, honestly, neither was the gabbing, but she was too embarrassed to ask them to tone it down and besides, clearly Charlotte or Meg or Jamie or Sorelli had helped her back to the room, so it would be the height of rudeness to tell them off because her stupid decision to drink left her in this state. Head still fuzzy, she allowed herself to be walked down to the room with the continental breakfast. Jamie left her in a chair by a big electric fireplace and Christine crossed her arms across her stomach and tried not to hurl into a planter which held a fake looking fern.

"Be back in a sec – I'll have coffee!" Jamie beamed, as though the offer of coffee was going to do anything other than cause Christine to edge slightly closer to the planter. Why did she even need to get out of bed? What was she even doing down there?

"Ready to sing?" Erik's voice wafted down from on high – _damn_ he was tall when she was sitting – as he perched on the arm of her chair and held out a plain bagel wrapped in a napkin.

Sing. Oh, crap. Right, she'd signed up for some stupid class where she was going to have to sing with some stupid people. Granted, it hadn't been stupid at the beginning of the week, it was a smallish class and kind of hard to get into since 500 kids were usually crammed into some tiny hotel conference room and no one learned, but she was one of thirty students going to a voice 'intensive.' She had completely forgotten about it until Erik brought it up. Why was he bringing it up? Why was he bringing her bagels, didn't he remember she was mad at him?

Obviously not. "You don't have to eat the whole thing," he said, thrusting the room-temperature bread product under her nose, "but you'll feel better if you do. I was going to get you Gatorade, but I figure you've had enough of that, so I got you tea instead. Eat the bagel first though, it's still hot.

Gatorade. Just the name made her stomach churn. "I don't have any sheet music," she groaned.

"Don't worry about it, I took the liberty of bringing some along – seriously, eat the bagel, your life will be so much happier," Erik said and just like that some crisp white sheets of paper appeared in his right hand that she would _swear_ hadn't been there a minute ago. He was a freaking witch.

"Lemme see," she said, since the notes did not look remotely familiar to her.

"Eat your bagel," he said tauntingly, easily holding the papers out of reach. It was infuriating, how he could be so...Erik. At a time like this, especially when she didn't think she liked him. But she took a few bites of the bagel and didn't projectile vomit everywhere and started to think this whole eating and drinking thing had merit. "Anyway, the _point_, if you read your pamphlet, is to work on something you haven't mastered. I'm pretty sure you've done about as much as you can do with _The Music Man_."

"Nuh-uh," Christine replied lamely, blushing a bit since she kinda-sorta wanted to do 'My White Knight' to look good among her fellow singers because she knew she nailed it every time. "And what'd you give me? I can't just learn some random song in ten minutes."

"You know this song, don't worry about it," Erik said, but he relented and handed the copies over, apparently satisfied that she was well on her way to recovery.

It took a quick glance at the key signature and the lyrics to confirm that Christine _did_ know the song and there was no way in _hell_ she was performing it cold in front of thirty strangers. "Are you _trying _to kill me?" she asked him, eyes wide in horror, voice squeaking a bit. "No way. No _way_. No way am I singing Jason Robert Brown at nine in the morning and...are you trying to torture me? Is this a punishment?"

He actually had the audacity to look offended. "No, Jesus, what's your problem?" he asked, running a hand through his hair nervously. "I don't have the key card for your room and this is the only score I have – I thought you'd be _pleased_,at least I'm not letting you embarrass yourself going in there without music. Sweet Erik, remember?"

No, she did not remember. _Songs for a New World_ was filled with notoriously difficult music that was incredibly dependent upon the singer's acting ability to make the performance worthwhile. And "I'm Not Afraid of Anything?" Please. She was afraid of _everything._ In high school, her voice teacher actually wanted her to learn this one for the end of the year concert, but gave up after two lessons. It was like Erik was psychic. But an evil, malicious psychic.

"I'm pretty sure I hate you," Christine said, taking another bite of her bagel and glaring at Erik.

There was a momentary flicker of...something on his face. Hurt? Was he hurt? Before Christine had time to process it, though, he was shrugging and said simply, "You're just hungover. You'll thank me someday." And he patted her on the head, like she was a labradoodle or something and wandered off, leaving the cup of tea on the arm of the chair.

Charlotte marched up, her own sheet music in a folder under her arm, not paying Erik any attention as she made a beeline for Christine. "Ohmygod, I totally forgot to grab your music, are you up for running? 'Cuz we can run back for it, we'll only be, like, two minutes late, tops."

Christine just shook her head and said, "No, no, I don't want to make you late, you just go, I'll...um. I don't even know."

Charlotte narrowed her eyes, "What do you mean, 'you don't know'? You're not coming. You're _so_ coming, don't even give me that, I'm not going alone."

For all of Charlotte's piss and vinegar, take-no-prisoners bitchitude in front of friends and acquaintances, she had serious issues walking into new situations without backup. And in this particular case, that backup was coming in the form of Christine. If she didn't have someone to perform her 'I don't take other people's shit' attitude for, someone who was _expecting_ her to perform that way, well, she had a hard time maintaining the facade. Luckily, for her own sake, the current performance did the job and Christine shuffled along behind her to the conference room and the two of them grabbed seats near the back. Charlotte glanced over at Christine's music stand where she was desperately trying to memorize the words as she hummed under her breath.

"Ooh, _love_ this song, way more awesome than 'White Knight,' hun, good choice."

"Not my choice," Christine hissed through gritted teeth. "Erik just handed it to me, like, five minutes ago, he is _such_ an asshole, I can't stand him."

Charlotte gave her a confused look. "I thought you guys were cool now."

"What? No, I'm mad at him. I'm way mad at him, like...god."

Both of Charlotte's dark eyebrows rose toward her hairline. It occurred to Christine for the first time that the fire-engine red curls she sported might actually come from a bottle. "Still? I mean...okay, be mad if you want to, God knows I get pissed at him, but I figured after he got you back to the room last night, you'd give him a break."

"What?" Christine asked, but there was a sudden rush of students, talking and warming up and scraping chairs and music stands across the floor. Either Charlotte didn't hear her or thought the conversation was over because she didn't reply.


	56. An Unexpected Song

AN: I wasn't planning on uploading this chapter today, I was going to give it some lag time, but after receiving a passionate review, I thought I'd upload it and address a few things:

1. Our characters' privilege. I don't deny for a minute that these guys have it EASY. And they're not perfect. The incident with the BA students during _Godspell_ auditions and their reactions to _Burn_ proves that they have a very high school mentality even though they're ostensibly adults. Christine and Raoul as relative 'outsiders' recognize how clique-y they are and are uncomfortable with it, but they also desperately want to be part of this group. I'll admit, having the auditions effectively closed was just my way of keeping my character load manageable since I didn't want to bring too many people in before the main cast was firmly established, maybe that was lazy, but I also think it proves a point about how insular and incestuous small theatre programs can be and how VERY quickly things can turn nasty. This is actually going to come to a head in the future installment.

2. Erik's privilege specifically. To be completely honest from the get-go, I wanted him to be an insider. I wanted him to be the king (or at least prince) of his little theatre world. I didn't (and still don't) want the story to mimic any particular version of Phantom exactly. He's not without problems, as we've seen in past chapters and though he might be openly acknowledged as the most talented person around for the moment, that in no way indicates that he'll have an amazing professional career. The worst part, in my opinion, is that he's smart enough to realize that. This is part of the reason he HATES the Irene Ryans, he's surrounded by people who are probably less talented than him, but who have a better shot of making it because they don't have his physical limitations. My Erik doesn't just have his face to contend with, though that's part of it. He has a whole host of medical complications since I am attempting to base his condition in reality. If you have a chronic illness and mental health concerns, that will affect your life in the 21st century as much as a facial deformity (we can argue about Leroux's intentions for Erik's mental state later) would in the 19th.

All of this is not to say that I expect every person who wanders across this fic to love it or think I'm doing great work, but I like these characters and I want you guys who are reading to know that I read the reviews and value your opinions, even though I'm very set in the story I want to tell. If it's not your cuppa, no judgment, I don't like everything I read either, but I want you to know that I am thinking a lot about every aspect of this story, even if my characters don't know it ;-) There is a method to my madness, promise. And if anyone wants to drop me a line either through review or PM about things that aren't working for you or things that make you smile, let me know, I love to hear from you.

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The class wasn't quite all it was cracked up to be. The conference room had about fifty chairs, all of which were filled (apparently the organizers underestimated the power of hungover college kids to actually show up on time to early morning commitments). Charlotte was bitching quietly under her breath about how no one should have been let in if they didn't sign up prior to the festival, that she was missing a week of practice with her own vocal coach which would have been more valuable, blah, blah blah. Christine was nodding and 'hmm'ing at what she hoped were appropriate intervals, but most of her attention was focused on the sheet music before her.

What gave Erik the right to force a new song on her, one that she hadn't even practiced once before coming here? Singing along in the car did _not_ count as 'knowing' a song and even if she did manage to hit most of the right notes, she'd probably forget the lyrics half way through and walk off the stage in tears. She had a tendency to cry at the most inopportune times and she could feel her heart beating in her throat as she tried to hold back a well of tears even now. How _could_ she have been so stupid? How could she have had so much to drink when she _knew_ she had a commitment to make in the morning?

Erik. It all came down to Erik. Even if Charlotte was right, even if he'd taken her back to her room and tucked her in (which she found seriously hard to believe), that still didn't mean that everything else he'd put her through was water off a duck's back. Okay, so he didn't take advantage of her when she was drunk. Was that seriously the mark of a good person? 'Oh, hey, a guy didn't rape a girl, that totally makes him a candidate for sainthood?' - was that seriously what Charlotte was thinking? Was that what Erik was thinking with his bagels and tea and sheet music?

There was a knot in Christine's stomach and it had nothing to do with the alcohol or bagel. She was confused, frustrated and pissed off at everyone, frankly. Erik was too much to handle and the way everyone just fell all over themselves trying to, what, protect him? It was too much. First there was the crazy in December, which, okay, she forgave him for that since he couldn't help himself and he'd been much better recently. But this? Lying to her (lies of omission were still lies) about his face, freaking out on her, almost getting into a fight? It was the fighting that really horrified her, above and beyond anything else. Didn't he _think_? He could have gotten hurt, she could have gotten hurt. If he was really her friend, wouldn't he think about her safety for just a minute before he ran off to go all Jets and Sharks on that Montag kid?

He hadn't. Therefore, whatever decent, human thing he did the night before didn't matter much when you got right down to it. Erik wasn't a good friend. And Christine was sick and tired of trying to justify his behavior to herself.

Naturally, she couldn't hope to avoid him. That would be...impossible. They had classes together, not to mention the shows they would do until the semester was over. It wasn't even really fair to be nasty to him (nor was it fair to her either since all of their mutual friends were technically _his_ friends first and she knew whose side they'd choose). She just needed to detach. Make her social calendar a little more diverse. It was utterly bizarre now that she thought about it, how close they'd become and how quickly. They scarcely knew one another and she went off to upstate New York with him. Who did that?

So wrapped up in her thoughts was she that Christine hardly noticed the first half of the class zip by. She went through vocal warm-ups and breathing exercises with everyone else in the room, hardly glancing at the instructor. Charlotte started chatting with some girl on her left since Christine was being such a wet mop. It took the pressure of pretending to be social off and Christine was free to divide her attention between her music and the Erik Situation.

The second half of the class consisted of vocal demonstrations and instructions. It was a bit of a laugh, every student had seven minutes of personal time onstage. Three for the song, and four critique. Her song was thirty seconds longer than the time constraint; thanks Erik. Charlotte was slightly vindicated; only students who signed up for the class were allowed to perform. There was a 'panel' of three instructors, one woman who led them through warm-ups, another was an actor whose most recent claim to fame was performing as a swing and understudy for Adam Godley in the _Anything Goes _revival and the third was a portly older man who was a retired dialect coach at the Met. God, she was going to be so humiliated.

At least she wasn't the only one. Even half paying attention as she was, Christine had enough of her wits about her to be rather appalled at the treatment her fellow students were receiving when it was their turn. One young guy who kind of reminded her of Freddy, he was wiry and blonde with glasses, sang a really, really beautiful rendition of "Tell My Father" from _The Civil War_. He had a really gorgeous, soaring voice which effortlessly reached the high notes and Christine distantly noticed a few people sniffling around her. The panel tore him apart. They complained about his performance (granted, he just stood there, but what else was he supposed to do in three minutes in front of a microphone that they'd been instructed not to move or adjust much?), the woman said it was obvious he didn't know anyone who'd been in a war because the emotional range of the song was just too simplistic. There was no anguish.

"People come to the theatre hoping to see another life before them," the dialect coach agreed. "It is up to you, as a performer, to show them that life. Did you do that? Do you think an audience would believe you were a soldier?"

The poor kid was turning red, but he looked defiantly at them and said, "Yeah. I think so."

"You're wrong," the instructor replied, with a slight sneer over a walrus mustache. "Go practice in front of a mirror – better yet, talk to some actual veterans. Then see if you have the stomach to sing that song again in public."

It was like that for every kid, if they couldn't insult your technique (which they had a hard time with as most of the students were very good), they insulted the performance, though the pamphlet plainly stated that this was not going to be an acting class. Charlotte actually bit her lip before her name was called and Christine had just enough presence of mind to give her arm as squeeze and wish her luck.

Charlotte was a bit of an enigma to Christine. At times she could be a real bitch, but she also had the ability to get almost childishly excited about things and it was clear that she cared about her friends a lot. She didn't take compliments well, though she obviously liked being the center of attention. All in all, Christine didn't think she was a bad person, just not someone who was ever going to become her best friend, but Christine wouldn't wish this panel of piranhas on anyone – not even Erik – at the moment.

Mounting the stage in her jeans and loose-fitting jersey tunic, Charlotte looked confident. She smiled at the accompanist as she handed her music over and pointedly adjusted the mic stand down. No, she and Charlotte might never be besties, but there was something about her Christine really admired and that was the fact that she didn't take people's crap. Charlotte and Erik argued a lot, but he never bossed her around; maybe she should start act a little more like her.

Charlotte was singing "An Unexpected Song," which was an unusual choice because it wasn't super-current or super-old like most of the other students were going for. Personally Christine liked it (she liked a lot of Andrew Lloyd Weber, but she learned quickly not to bring it up with Erik who _hated_ him...maybe she should sing 'Memory' constantly around him?).

Charlotte was just great. Her vibrato wasn't excessive and her voice had a strength to it that Christine's tended to lose when she was nearing the top of her range. "Timid" was a term her voice teacher used a lot when describing her singing and Christine didn't _want_ to be timid. Charlotte certainly wasn't.

"_I have never felt like this  
For once I'm lost for words  
Your smile has really thrown me  
This is not like me at all  
I never thought I'd know  
The kind of love you've shown me_

_Now, no matter where I am_  
_No matter what I do_  
_I see your face appearing_  
_Like an unexpected song_  
_An unexpected song_  
_That only we are hearing."_

At least not while she was singing. Once she'd finished (and a good portion of students clapped, including Christine), she seemed to shrink under the criticism.

"_What_ made you pick that one?" the former swing asked, his nose wrinkling. "It...there's nothing there. There's nothing to work on. I don't even know how to critique you since you gave us _nothing_."

"You have an impressive range," the woman said, almost snidely, "but it would have been better to pick a piece where you could show it off and actually show some emotion beyond 'Oh, I'm SO happy.' Anyone can act happy, that's playing it safe."

The dialect coach just rolled his eyes in a long-suffering manner, "Were you just hoping you would impress us? This isn't the place for that, if you wanted to learn anything, you wouldn't come in with a song you'd done all you could with – and with that song, there wasn't much work to do, was there?"

Charlotte didn't even get her full seven minutes, they just harangued her about how there was nothing they could say and obviously she didn't want to learn and she wouldn't get far in this business without challenging herself before they asked her to leave the stage – after she readjusted the mic to where it was supposed to be.

Her face was almost as red as her hair. Christine hardly knew what to say, but when she extended her hand to give her classmate's a supportive shoulder pat, Charlotte cringed away and glared at her before hissing, "Don't. I don't need it."

But it was pretty clear she did. Out of the corner of her eye, Christine saw her wipe her hand viciously across her face and it was obvious she was crying. Charlotte didn't take compliments well, but obviously she had just as much trouble with criticism.

Another five people went up for their eviscerations before it was Christine's turn. Her hands shook and she could hardly look at the accompanist. He was wearing a white dress shirt and black pantsand she almost glanced up to see if he and Erik had magically swapped places, but she resisted the urge. First of all, it was impossible (unless he _was_ a witch) and second, having Erik nearby was not supposed to be a comforting thought, so she banished it quickly.

Christine warbled her way through the number, craning her neck upward a bit since she didn't dare adjust the mic down for her comfort. She remembered the lyrics, hit the right notes and toward the end, she thought she made a descent show of projecting the necessary vulnerability under the bravado. Surprisingly, at least for her, she actually managed to work a little defiance into the performance by channeling some of her frustration into the song. Nervous as she was, she still recognized that these instructors were not teaching as much as they were judging and she didn't think that was something anyone had signed up for. They thought they were taking a voice class, not lining up as the next round of contestants on a particularly vicious version of _American Idol_. Still, it wasn't enough.

"You know," the warm-up woman said, "it's almost as insulting to come in here with a song you haven't rehearsed as with a song you've over-rehearsed."

"You're very sweet-voiced," the swing added, slightly condescendingly. "You really thought that was the best choice for you?"

_No_, Christine wanted to say. _My ex-friend Erik thought I could_. But she just licked her lips and said, "I-I haven't rehearsed much, but I think I can handle this. I know I'm...not much of belter."

"It's not an issue of belting," the dialect coach said, almost as though he were disgusted. "It's an issue of being talented enough and mature enough to handle the content of a piece of music. You're just not ready. Stick to ingenue numbers, that's what you're fit for."

At least she got her seven minutes. They sprinkled in some practical advice, told her to open her chest more, throw her shoulders back so she wasn't constricting her lungs and diaphragm, but Christine still felt the tears pricking at her eyes when she went to sit back down. One slipped down her cheek right as she was walking down the stairs and she brought her sleeve to her face to blot it away. The action didn't go unnoticed.

The woman stood up, pursed her lips and looked out at the gathered students. "You kids might think we're being tough, but you'll have worse than us to deal with if you want to get ahead in this industry. You think we're bad? You want to go back to your rooms and cry when this is all over, fine, but not on this stage. We're pussycats. Wait until a casting director tells you you're too fat for a role. Or too old. Or too black or too Asian, whatever. You think we're tough? You kids have no idea. Now, you don't think you can handle it, that's fine, you can go, but we're moving on with this class."

They weren't calling out names, each student who signed up got a number, probably so they didn't have to waste time. Number 21 was up next and Christine was too busy trying to sink through her chair and dissolve into the floor to take notice of who it was.

It wasn't until she heard him sing that she looked up and felt all of her own anxieties and unhappiness melt away.

Christine had no idea Erik even signed up for this class. Ever since he heard they were going to the ACTF, he'd had nothing but vitriol for the classes and the people who took them. He called them jokes, said no one got anything out of being crammed in a room with two-hundred other people trying to learn from a handful of instructors who didn't know them from a hole in the wall. Yet there he was, in his usual attire of dark jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, singing "The Old Red Hills of Home" from _Parade_. It was only the first half of the song, traditionally a tenor part, which was a surprise since he usually didn't choose songs written from the perspective of smitten young men writing to their sweethearts. He sang with such tenderness though, such innocent certainty and eagerness that Christine couldn't help getting caught up in it. She could almost believe there was some Lilah out there that he was singing for, some melancholy girl who was waiting for her soldier boyfriend to come home to her.

This was it, she realized. _This_ was why people gave in to him and couldn't stay mad at him for long. Even if Erik didn't have any redeeming qualities, aside from his voice, his voice was enough. It was hard to describe it, it was more than just a pleasing sound, Erik had a way of phrasing, of pacing that just sucked you in. He could sing the newspaper headlines and Christine would be enthralled. It was a voice you had to hear to understand and once he was finished, it was impossible to replicate the sound in your head, you just wanted him to keep singing forever.

Of course, he only had three minutes. He finished on a note that she could swear she felt reverberating in her own chest and people were _stunned_ for a full five seconds before they burst into applause. Who wouldn't be stunned? Who wouldn't be shocked that a voice like _that_, such a rich, sophisticated sound could come from the chest and throat of a gangly kid with a pockmarked, gaunt face? A teenager who was barely old enough to drive, let alone leave a room full of vocalists and professionals reeling after delivering a good song perfectly sung?

Christine was almost smug. _Let _them criticize Erik. Let them try. And she was thrilled that she got to meet up with this boy after all was said and done, that they could laugh about those stupid instructors and how he showed them and wasn't she lucky? Wasn't she lucky that she knew someone who was so talented? That he was so talented and he wanted to be _her_ friend?

Except they weren't friends, she remembered. She couldn't handle him. She didn't want to put up with his abrasiveness and neediness and temper and all the bad stuff. The bad stuff completely outweighed the good stuff.

It did, didn't it?

Erik was standing on stage, as defiant as Charlotte had been when she first got up there, looking expectantly at the judges, waiting for his critique.

Unbelievably, they had negative things to say. The song was wrong for him, like the other kid who sang from _Civil War_, who would believe him as a soldier? The dialect coach had the nerve to say that his voice worked _against_ him. No one who looked like him should have a voice like that.

"You're all wrong," he said, shaking his head and stroking his mustache. "You're so...tall and thin – I'm being honest here – and with a voice like that...no. No one would believe it."

The swing was inclined to agree, but he looked almost sympathetic, "I'm sorry, it's true, believe me I've been there. Better you know now. You have a great voice, an amazing voice, but... no one would hire you. Maybe get off the stage and take a job in radio. You aren't the whole package."

Without knowing that she was going to do it, Christine got to her feet. "Are you _kidding_?" she asked, momentarily not knowing her own voice. It got shrill and tinny when she was upset. "He has a _beautiful_ voice and that was a great performance. You...you aren't being honest. You're just being cruel. You can be honest and criticize someone and try and help them or you can tear them down and that's what you're doing. It's mean and...if you don't want to help us get better and if you don't want us to succeed then just get another job or retire for real this time."

The place was stunned into silence for the second time in one day. Erik was a complete blank during the panel's overly harsh words, but his eyes went wide, gleaming briefly under the hotel lights as Christine lit into them. Charlotte hesitated a second before getting to her feet and nodding vigorously. "Yeah," she chimed in. "Being horrible and making people cry is just bullying. And then throwing your hands up and saying we're the problem and you're just trying to 'prepare' us – that's bullshit. And I'm not putting up with it." This time, her hand was on Christine's arm as she tugged her toward the door.

Their little walk-out wasn't as effective as it could have been. After all, both of them got their chance to sing already. Erik very calmly walked off the stage after giving the panel an ironic little bow. A few people actually got up and followed them out, including the blonde _Civil War_ guy, but they hardly made a dent in the overall population of the room.

"That was amazing," the kid was gushing once they were out in the hallway. "Seriously – both of you. I mean, wow!" He tilted his head back to look up at Erik with an admiring smile. "You have such an amazing voice – people would be insane not to cast you for...I dunno, everything? And _you_," he grinned at Christine. "That was so brave. I couldn't have done something like that."

Frankly, Christine wasn't sure how she'd done it either. She felt like she wanted to throw up. This wasn't like her, railing against injustice from a conference room all because people were being mean to a guy she didn't even want to be friends with anymore. Or did she want to stay friends? Was Erik going to think this meant they were friends again? Did she want him to think that?

Erik, though, didn't seem to be paying much attention to her. He was looking at the blonde kid, with his typical good looks and very fine voice. He'd have no problem being cast. In everything. Even if he didn't look like a soldier – who did? Soldiers in musicals were clean and sang about their feelings. He'd do great. "Thanks," he said after a moment, clearly struggling not to punch the kid in the face and break his nose to level the playing field in some absurd way. That small act of kindness performed, Erik turned on his heel and stalked away without saying a word to anyone else.

Christine didn't know what to make of that, her head was spinning and her stomach hurt and she just wanted to lie down. "I'm going back to our room," she mumbled to Charlotte. The red-haired girl nodded, probably said something, maybe told Christine how freaking awesome she was, but Christine didn't hear it. She didn't hear much of anything except the echoes of the song Erik sang and she wished she could block that out.


	57. One Last Kiss

AN: Before this next installment, I'd like to thank everyone whose stopped by to give this story a look-see. Thanks to all who left reviews, especially **Smidgie **and **miss awesome 1213** for their lovely comments about the last chapter. All of you who have been with this epic tale since the beginning deserve major kudos since this has been a LOT longer than I anticipated. And with more to come! I've gotten a major shot in the arm of inspiration after watching the 25th Anniversary ALW show on PBS (and getting it on DVD for my birthday). I've been feeling down and out over the last year, but that performance really bucked me up, it reminded me of when I first fell in love with _The Phantom of the Opera_ which was subsequently why I fell in love with theatre. Nothing like a big heaping bucket of warm, gooey nostalgia to enliven the muses!

Disclaimer: I don't own _Phantom _or any additional media. I think it's safe to say that _Phantom_ owns me.

* * *

_Oh_,_ one last kiss,_  
_ Give me one last kiss,_  
_ It never felt like this,_  
_ No, never felt like this,_  
_ You know I need your love._  
_ Oh! Oh! Oh!_  
_ Oh, give me one last kiss!  
-Bye, Bye Birdie  
_

It was a defeated band of adolescents to made the long, sad trek down the eastern seaboard at the conclusion of the competition. Not only had _Burn_ taken the top prize for regional achievement in musical theatre (and what was THAT about?), Tim got an irate call about a bunch of St. Mary's students causing a scene at one of the vocal instruction classes. It surprised him to hear that Erik wasn't the ringleader, but he was so flabbergasted that it had been quiet little _Christine_ of all people that he couldn't even bring himself to be that upset. He just shook his head at them and told Christine that Erik was having a bad influence on her. She didn't disagree.

For someone who dragged them along to a competition he didn't really believe in for a prize he'd been disparaging the entire time they were there, Tim took the loss pretty hard. Erik tried in vain to cheer him up a bit, reminded him that it wasn't as though the prize was particularly desirable, they'd have to take the show to the national competition, what was $10,000 _really_and it was ultimately just another accomplishment to put on the brochure and season programs. Who cares?

Tim, apparently. He appreciated Erik's attempts at being helpful, but basically blew him off to sulk in his room. Coming up for a breath from the ocean of self-absorption that Erik usually swam in, Tim's attitude struck Erik as strange. Chester was no help, his lips were zipped when asked to comment on his partner's mental state. He just told Erik not to worry about it.

Usually, the best way to ensure Erik's undivided attention was to tell him to stay out of something. 'Don't worry' was typically a kinder way of saying 'none of your business' and there was nothing Erik enjoyed more than meddling in things that were none of his business, but he had a more pressing concern that absorbed his attention for the remainder of their time in New Hampshire: Christine was ignoring him.

Well, kind of. She spoke to him, it wasn't like she was avoiding all contact with him, but she wasn't replying to his texts with anything but short strings of letters, '**y**,' '**n**,' '**idk**' and the occasional, meaningless '**lol**.' Also she'd been spending a LOT of time with Raoul, apparently in the hotel gym. Maybe they were getting over their New England hibernation early and wanted to get into shape for swimsuit weather early...but he was bothered by it. Not bothered enough that he wanted to actually go down to the gym and observe them. It wouldn't be smart. Guys like him stuck out like sore thumbs in a gym, he'd be spotted immediately. It occurred to him that they might be dating now, but recalling Raoul's little Halloween confessional, he thought it was just as likely that they were running side by side on treadmills discussing their feelings.

Clearly his new meds were working miracles. Normally, his anxiety would skyrocket when he thought one of his friends was angry with him. He did a lot to alienate people, on an intellectual level he recognized this, but as Christine so astutely pointed out, he didn't actually want anyone angry with him – more accurately, he didn't want anyone to _leave_ him. After going so long without a reliable group of friends, the fact that he had several people he could call friends made him nervous to lose one of them. She didn't know that, of course, she probably thought he was a hypocrite.

She didn't remember the drunken snuggling and bonding over opera, didn't take a genius to recognize that she'd utterly forgotten the fact that she'd forgiven him for being a dickhead. Still, he thought that maybe her little speech on his behalf during that vocal class meant _something_. Apparently not.

The few times they'd actually spoken to one another, that never came up. Charlotte bragged enough about how Christine was _such_ a badass, but neither Erik nor Christine was eager to relive it. They were both horrifically embarrassed, but for different reasons. He had no idea why he'd even gone. Maybe he was a masochist.

Ahmed, as usual, wanted him to 'talk' about it, but Erik was trying to compartmentalize and forget it. Repression was the healthiest option in cases like this. So he tucked it away in the unwanted memories portion of his brain, where it sat snugly alongside the recollection of childhood bullies, hospital stays and doctors' visits when he had a pretty bad flare-up and other kids found him so freaky looking that they ran for their parents, who passed him with a wide berth, probably assuming he was contagious. Yep, lock the door on that and throw away the key, it kept him from being crazier than he already was.

The ride back to Rhode Island was slow, due to a steady downpour which started the day before they left and continued unabated through noon. Freddy and Ahmed took turns driving, while Erik forced the passenger side seat as far back as it could go so he could recline. There was a migraine building up behind his eyes, so he wrapped one of his t-shirts around his head to block out light while keeping his iPod playing _The Freelance Whales_ at a low volume to ease the pounding in his skull. He only removed his makeshift eye mask when he got out of the van to unload their props and bid his comrades goodbye until next Monday when the returned to class as usual. This turned out to be a mistake.

Erik had heaved their inexpertly rolled wire fence onto his shoulder, the metal cold and digging into his neck as he made his way up the loading dock. Cars were parked haphazardly in the tiny parking lot next to the theatre and he saw Christine and Raoul engaged in some kind of furtive conversation.

"It just used to be _fun_," she was saying with a kind of quiet despair. "I'm not having fun anymore."

Raoul was nodding sympathetically. "I know," he said and Erik took that moment to hide behind the prop van Tim and Chester were driving in. It was either a matter of good timing or bad timing that he always seemed to unknowingly observe this little tete-a-tetes between the two of them. Experience should have taught him to keep moving and not listen, but he wasn't one to learn from past mistakes.

Heaving a sigh, Christine folded her arms and looked at the ground. "I'm just...I'm not happy."

"You should be happy, you deserve to be happy," Raoul said so sweetly it made Erik's molars ache. God, he was _such _a Boy Scout, wasn't he? "I don't want you to be not happy."

"It's not your fault, you're pretty much the only person here who doesn't drive me nuts," she said and Erik felt momentarily ill. Yes, he knew he'd screwed up their friendship a few times, but he'd been making an effort recently. He brought her sheet music, he brought her breakfast, he hadn't forced her to witness horrible manifestations about the most screwed up parts of his life in three whole _days_. Didn't she appreciate the effort? "If it was just you I had to deal with, I wouldn't care so much, but I can't handle the angst and the attitudes and...I just don't want to do this anymore."

Raoul reached out and hugged her close. "Don't think about that. Just don't focus on the negative. I think it's the weather, you know? People are always...weird when the weather's bad. Hey, how about we make a deal? We could have a signal. When people are driving you crazy just...pull your ear or something and I'll make you smile. Or try?"

Okay, seriously, someone shut that boy up. Erik was trying to to gag or burst out laughing at Raoul's completely heart-felt, but incredibly soppy offering of sunshine and smiles. That kid had some of the lamest come-ons this side of an ABC Family sitcom.

Except Christine didn't seem to think so. Maybe that's where he'd gone wrong with her. In fact, Christine seemed to think that was the most romantic thing she'd ever heard since she fucking _kissed Raoul_ right in the middle of the _goddamned parking lot_.

It was a short kiss. Erik dropped the wire which bit into his neck, scraping his chin and causing him to shout, "Motherfucker!" utterly blowing his cover. His classmates sprang apart as though they'd been burned and both looked up in mingled surprise as they saw him emerge from behind the truck, one hand at his throat.

"Are you okay?" Christine asked, the most she'd said to him since their awkward chat before _Godspell_.

Was he? Erik took his hand away from his neck and looked at it. No blood. Apparently he was just barely grazed. "Fine," he said tightly. "Fine." He bent down to pick up the deconstructed fence. "You kids just keep on necking. Don't mind me." And with remarkable self-possession, he managed to make it three paces into the storage space before dropping the fence on the floor and sinking down behind a discarded flat, not sure if he was going to cry or be sick or what.

So he _did_ have a thing for Christine. At least, he assumed the roiling ache in his stomach was jealousy. It had to be. He had all the symptoms. His throat was dry, his eyes were burning and his back felt like he had ants crawling up and down his spine. Fuck. _Fuck_.

He'd only felt like this once before his entire life and _that_ was an incident stored in the very vaults of his Repressed Memory Bank. He'd repressed it so well that its only manifestation was a sense of deja vu that he'd felt this horrible before and never intended to feel so again. Well, so much for that plan.

Could he blame her? Could he? Nope. Not at all. Dating was something utterly out of the question, he decided that long ago. He didn't talk about people he was interested in and firmly trained himself to be uninterested. Who would want him? Even if he hadn't been crazy, he wasn't remotely attractive. A long, lean pile of bones with an unremarkable face even if all of it managed to stay attached. Being that he was ugly _and_ crazy meant the pickings of potential partners were slim and probably limited to amputee fetishists who would_ still _look him over since he had all his limbs.

If he was a disembodied voice, well, he might have better luck, but since his life was not actually a gothic novel, that wouldn't get him very far. Unless he took up a career as a phone sex operator, which could be a possibility if this whole acting thing didn't work out.

He'd been so deep in his self-denial he hadn't even admitted to himself that he was attracted to Christine. Aside from the fact that she was a petite blonde with genetically desirable Nordic features, she was _so_ nice, she had a sense of humor and a sense of justice and she...got him. A little, the little of him he'd showed to her, she got. She visited him in the hospital, she let him talk her ear off about his favorite operas, he was trying to be nicer to please her. Yeah, he had it bad and all the time she was burying her face in his sleeve during horror movies and drunkenly trusting him not to leer at her when she changed he hadn't once felt it. Not any of the good stuff about having a crush, just the horrified_ri_ realization that it was unrequited.

And of course it would be after last week. Months ago Sorelli claimed she'd had a big crush on him in high school, but she never said anything about it when she was sober. He would never have expected her to; she'd seen what he really looked like. Now Christine had and he knew that even if she forgave him for this outburst, she'd never ever consider dating him. Or kissing him with any serious intent. You could be ugly and sane or attractive and totally cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and maybe you could expect romantic interest, but you couldn't be both sides of the crap stick. Raoul was ridiculously handsome and totally stable. Who wouldn't prefer him?

"Hey, dude." It was Ahmed and he sounded worried. What, were Christine and Raoul announcing their engagement? He'd been _right_, the bastard. He'd been right the whole time, was he coming to gloat?

"No, I do _not_ want to talk about it," Erik snarled, glaring up at him from his spot on the floor.

Ahmed had the nerve to look taken-aback. "You mean, you knew? You knew and you didn't tell me?" He crouched down and gave Erik's arm a fairly hard shove, "What the hell, man!"

"What the fuck do you care?" Erik shot back, hardly noticing that Ahmed did not seem to be reacting to the same thing Erik was reacting to. "Do I care? I don't fucking care. It's not like it really involves me, right?"

"What are you talking about?" Ahmed asked, throwing his hands up in frustration. "It involves _all_ of us, are you kidding?"

Okay, now Erik was beginning to expect that they were talking about two completely different things. "What? Since when? Were you all having orgies I wasn't invited to?"

This time Ahmed didn't even try to engage in a dialogue. "So, I don't know what the hell you're talking about and we can have that conversation later, but you NEED to come upstairs. Like, _now_."

Curious, Erik got up off the floor and followed Ahmed to the lobby. Tim and Chester were nowhere to be found, he would later discover that they were having a major fight upstairs in the manager's office. The reason for the fight was a typed note taped to the window of the box office. It had been written only a half hour before and printed on Tim's official company stationary. Ahmed was the first one to find it and as Erik was the only one he told, the two of them stared in combined disbelief at the words typed in 12-point font that might as well have been penned in blood for all the horror they held.

The note read as follows:

**To the Company -**

**I've secured the rights to _Les Miserables_, which will be going forward as our spring show. Auditions to follow in one month's time. We will premiere the first weekend in May. **

**Don't cut your hair.**

**-T.R.**

Erik read the note five times to make sure he wasn't seeing things. Then, he summed up the situation, succinctly and accurately as their classmates slowly filed in to the lobby, all stopping short and reading the note. He really spoke for all of them when he said, in a voice no louder than a whisper, "Holy shit."

* * *

AN: I know this isn't the cliffiest cliffhanger mankind has ever known, but this is where I'm going to leave you for the time being. Hopefully not very long! With the conclusion of the first half of this story and the beginning of the second semester (yes, it has only been ONE semester for these guys, really!), I'm going to upload a new story to continue the saga. It will be called _Company II: The Miserable Ones_ and I promise that it will be a LOT more fun than it sounds. Look for it coming soon! In the meantime, I'd be happy if you drop me a line telling me what you think about the tale thus far. Before I'm called out on it, yep, I know Les Mis still has restricted licensing, so I'm asking for a suspension of disbelief on that particular point (or we can pretend that Cameron MacKintosh owes Tim a favor because of something that happened in London in the 80s, the details of which are rather sketchy).


End file.
